Legal News

Williams & Connolly?s Craig to Rise to White House Counsel

By Dan Slater

Greg Craig — a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law, a Williams & Connolly partner and one who enjoys the rare distinction of membership in the Law Blog All-Name Team — has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to be the next administration’s top lawyer. Here’s Saturday’s report from Politico.

Craig, 63, can presumably trace his presidential relationships back to his days at Yale Law, where he graduated in 1972, a year before Bill and Hillary. After law school, according to Craig’s W&C bio, he worked with Edward Bennett Williams, a W&C co-founder, and went on to represent the NHL in antitrust litigation, Alexander Solzhenitsyn in a libel case and, in 2000, the father of Elian Gonzalez in proceedings involving Gonzalez’s effort to regain custody of his son. During Bill Clinton’s senate impeachment hearings, John Podesta, then deputy White House chief of staff and now a leader of Obama’s transition team, recruited Craig to represent Clinton, according to the Politico report.

Then, several years ago, investment banker Vernon Jordan, a friend of the Clintons, introduced Craig and Obama. Craig became an Obama foreign policy adviser during the 2008 campaign, and, as we noted in September, played the role of John McCain for Obama’s debate prep.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 17, 2008 (boomark / email).