Since his election as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama ’91 has been tapping Harvard Law School alumni and faculty members in putting together his administration. Those named to top-level jobs in the incoming administration include:

  • Preeta Bansal ’89 will serve as general counsel and senior policy advisor at the Office of Management and Budget at the White house. She served on the Obama transition team as a member of the immigration policy working group. Bansal is a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City. She was New York’s solicitor general from 1999 to 2001. From 1993 to 1996, she was counselor to then-assistant attorney general Joel Klein ’71 in the U.S. Department of Justice and as special counsel in the White House. Bansal serves as a commissioner and past chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
  • HLS Professor David Barron ’94 was appointed as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. He advised the transition team on justice and civil rights matters. Prior to joining the HLS faculty in 1999, Barron served as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel in the United States Department of Justice.
  • Cassandra Butts ’91, a close friend of Obama’s, has been serving as general counsel, a job that includes vetting possible appointees for ethical conflicts. She served as Obama’s domestic policy advisor on the campaign. Prior to working on Obama’s 2008 Presidential bid, Butts was senior vice president for domestic policy at the Center for American Progress and was a senior advisor to Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-MO). On December 23, Obama announced that Butts will be Deputy White House Counsel with a Focus on Domestic Policy and Ethics.
  • Louis Caldera ’87, who served as the 17th Secretary of the Army during the Clinton administration, will again play a leading role in Washington as Director of the White House Military Office, which is responsible for all military support for White House orders. After his stint as Army Secretary, Caldera worked in the California public university system before becoming president of the University of New Mexico. He currently teaches at the university’s law school.
  • Norman L. Eisen ’91 was named special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform at the fffice of the White Housel counsel. He most recently served as the deputy general counsel to the transition. Eisen was co-chair of the public client practice at Zuckerman Spaeder and founded Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-profit government watchdog group.
  • HLS Professor Jody Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95 was named counselor for energy and climate change in the White House. She will served as senior advisor to Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate “czar.”
  • Michael Froman ’91 was appointed to a joint position with the National Security Council and the National Economic Counsel, serving as the White House’s liaison to the G7, G8 and G20 summits of economic powers. Froman, a managing director at Citigroup, was chief of staff to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. He served on the transition team’s 12-member advisory board.
  • Jocelyn Frye ’88 will serve as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and director of policy and projects for the first lady. Previously, she worked as general counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families in Washington, DC, directing the National Partnership’s Workplace Fairness Program.
  • Julius Genachowski ’91 will be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Earlier, he was named to the transition team’s 12-member advisory board. A veteran of Internet business operations, Genachowski has been advising Obama on technology policy issues. He was an executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and was chief counsel to FCC chairman Reed Hundt.
  • Michael J. Gottlieb ’03 was appointed associate counsel to the president in the office of the White House counsel. He recently served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the United States attorney’s office for the central district of California. He was previously an associate at WilmerHale.
  • Danielle C. Gray ’03 joined the office of the White House counsel as associate counsel to the president. She recently served as deputy policy director for Obama for America, focusing on domestic policy as well as law and judicial issues. Previously, she was an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York.
  • Elena Kagan ’86, currently the dean of Harvard Law School and the Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law at the school, was nominated to be the 44th solicitor general of the United States. She served in the Clinton White House, first as associate counsel to the president and then as deputy assistant to the president for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council.
  • Ron Klain ’87, former chief of staff to Al Gore and member of the HLS visiting committee, has been chosen as the vice president’s chief of staff. Klain served as an advisor to Joe Biden during his Democratic primary bid. A debate coach for Democratic presidential candidates since 1992, he helped both Biden and Obama prepare for this year’s debates.
  • David Kris ’91, senior vice president, deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer at Time Warner Inc., was appointed head of the Department of Justice’s two-year-old National Security division. From 2000 until 2003, Kris was an associate deputy attorney general, supervising the government’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, representing the Department of Justice at the National Security Council, and assisting the attorney general in conducting oversight of the U.S. intelligence community.
  • Chris Lu ’91 has been appointed as cabinet secretary. Lu was legislative director and acting chief of staff in Obama’s Senate office, as well as a policy advisor during the presidential campaign. As cabinet secretary, he will manage the White House’s relationship with other government agencies
  • Robert Malley ’91 has been appointed as an envoy to Egypt and Syria. In addition to his HLS education, he earned a Ph. D. in political philosophy as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and clerked for Justice White. Later, Malley served in the Clinton administration on the National Security Council and as Special Assistant for Arab-Israel Affairs.
  • David William Ogden ’81 was chosen as deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice. Now a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr in Washington, D.C., where he is co-chair of the government and regulatory litigation group, he previously worked at the DOJ in several capacities during the Clinton administration. He led the Department of Justice Agency Review for the Obama-Biden Transition Project.
  • Thomas Perrelli ’91 was named associate attorney general at the Department of Justice. Currently the managing partner of Jenner & Block’s Washington, D.C., office, he served as deputy assistant attorney general during the Clinton administration, supervising the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division.
  • Harvard Kennedy School Professor Samantha Power ’99 was named senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council. She was was a member of the team of advisors looking at how the new administration should approach national security, defense, and state department issues.
  • Blake Roberts ’06 was named deputy associate counsel to the president in the office of the White House counsel. He recently served as a member of the pre-election transition team and then as assistant to transition executive director Chris Lu ’91. Prior to that, he worked as a field organizer in six states for Obama for America.
  • Anne-Marie Slaughter ’85 will direct the State Department’s office of policy planning. She leaves her post as dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Prior to Princeton, Slaughter was a professor at HLS.
  • Todd D. Stern ’77, formerly a staff secretary at the White House and the Clinton administration’s point man on climate change, was appointed climate change envoy in the Obama administration. Most recently, Stern was a partner at WilmerHale. He has also served in the Treasury Department, from 1999 to 2001, advising the Secretary on a broad range of economic and financial issues, and supervising Treasury’s anti-money laundering strategy. He also served as an advisor to Senator Patrick Leahy.
  • HLS Professor Cass Sunstein ’78 has been named administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has been associated with Obama since they both taught at the University of Chicago. Sunstein served as an advisor to the Obama campaign.

Obama has also appointed many HLS graduates and affiliates to agency review teams for the transition. They are charged with completing a thorough review of various departments, agencies, and commissions and to craft policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions. They are:

  • Jeremy Bash ’98 is a member of the national security policy working group, which is charged with developing policy priorities and plans for the new administration in the national security arena. Bash is chief counsel of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for the U.S. House of Representatives.
  • Anthony Brown ’92, currently lieutenant governor of Maryland, is co-chairman of Obama’s team for veterans’ affairs. He has served in the active and reserve components of the U.S. Army since 1984 and was deployed to Iraq to serve a 10-month tour in 2004. Brown was promoted to the rank of Colonel in 2007 and currently commands the 153rd Legal Support Organization in Pennsylvania.
  • Former HLS professor Christopher Edley, Jr. ’78, who taught Obama during his student days, was also named to the advisory board. Edley is currently the dean of the University of California-Berkeley Law School and taught at HLS for 23 years, co-founding the Harvard Civil Rights Project. He is a veteran of Washington, having worked on the Carter administration’s domestic policy staff and as a senior advisor for economic policy on the Dukakis campaign. In the Clinton administration, Edley was associate director for economics and government at the White House Office of Management and Budget. And, from 1999-2005, he served as a congressional appointee on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
  • Clark Kent Ervin ’85, a Texan with ties to President George W. Bush, will help review the Department of Homeland Security’s transition. Currently head of the Homeland Security Program at the Aspen Institute, he previously served as the department’s first inspector general under President Bush, as well as in a similar post at the State Department.
  • Current HLS visiting professor Cynthia Estlund will be reviewing the National Mediation Board. Estlund is visiting from NYU, where she is a professor of labor and employment law.
  • Roger Fairfax ’98, an associate professor at The George Washington University Law School, is serving as an adviser to the DOJ review team. He previously served as a federal prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section of the department’s Criminal Division.
  • Reviewing the Council on Environmental Quality will be George T. Frampton, Jr. ’69, currently a partner at the New York office of Boies, Schiller. He served as chairman of the council during the Clinton administration and was also an assistant secretary of the interior for fish, wildlife, and parks. Frampton has been a president of the Wilderness Society and has been a lawyer for former Vice President Al Gore.
  • Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm ’87 is playing a key role in the new administration’s economic policy review. With the auto industry in shambles, she is viewed as an important voice as the President-elect mulls over a new economic plan. Prior to the election, Granholm was Biden’s debate prep partner.
  • Massachusetts Undersecretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem ’95 was recently named to the transition team examining state and national security, defense, intelligence, and arms control matters.
  • Robin Lenhardt ’95, an Associate Professor of Law at Fordham Law School (and a former attorney advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice), is on the DOJ agency review team.
  • John Leshy ’69 is on the Obama-Biden Administration’s energy and national resources team, helping to conduct the review for the Department of Interior’s transition. Currently a professor at the University of California’s Hastings School of Law, he previously held posts at the Department of Justice, the National Resources Defense Council, as associate solicitor for energy and resources during the Carter administration, and as the Interior Department’s general counsel during the Clinton administration.
  • HLS Professor Kenneth Mack ’91 been named as an advisor to the Department of Justice Agency Review Team, where he will be focusing on civil rights issues. He is also an advisor to the Science, Technology, Space and Arts Agency Review Team, where he will advise Clement Price, who head of the Team working on the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • Spencer Overton ’93, an election law expert at the George Washington University Law School, has been charged with reviewing the Election Assistance Commission. He has represented the Democratic National Committee in a variety of cases.
  • Thomas Perez ’87 will be looking after the transitions of the Justice, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development Departments. He currently serves as Maryland’s Secretary of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation and has held several posts in the Justice Department.
  • Arti Rai ’91, a professor of patent law at Duke University, has been appointed as a member of the team reviewing science, technology, space, arts, and humanities issues.
  • Tonya Robinson ’98, a partner at WilmerHale in Washington, D.C., is on the DOJ agency review team, working with the civil rights group.
  • Mara Eve Rudman ’90 will lead the review of the Office of Economic Advisors. Currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and president of the international consulting firm Quorum Strategies, she previously served as deputy national security advisor and chief of staff of the national security council during the Clinton administration.
  • Shirley Sagawa ’87, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and co-founder of the consulting firm Sagawa/Jospin, is on the education and labor team. She was formerly deputy chief of staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton and was named first chief operating officer of AmeriCorps.
  • Phyllis Segal, a Program on Negotiation faculty member, will help review the transition of the Federal Labor Relations Authority. She served as deputy attorney general of Massachusetts and was previously on the board of the Federal Labor Relations Authority. She has also worked for the National Organization for Women.

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