President Barack Obama ’91 has nominated Charles Blanchard ’85 to be general counsel to the Department of the Air Force, Department of Defense, and Raymond Mabus ’75 as the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, reporting to the Secretary of Defense.
Blanchard is a litigation partner in the Phoenix, AZ office of Perkins Coie. From 1999 to 2001, he served as the general counsel of the U.S. Army. He was also chief counsel of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Earlier in his career, he was an attorney at Brown & Bain (1988-1997) and he served as an Arizona state senator from 1991-1995. Blanchard clerked for D.C. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. He is a graduate of Lewis & Clark College and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as of HLS.
Governor of Mississippi from 1988 to 1992, Mabus was named one of Fortune Magazine’s top ten education governors during his tenure. During the Clinton administration, he was ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Most recently, Mabus was the chairman and CEO of Foamex, where he successfully steered the manufacturing company out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He’s also served on the boards of defense contractor Enersys and the international Internet telephone company, Fusion Telecommunications. While an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi, Mabus was a member of the Naval ROTC, and he later joined the U.S. Navy as a surface warfare officer. In addition to his J.D. from HLS, he has a B.A. from the University of Mississippi and an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University.