Joins former O’Melveny partners Ron Klain and Alejandro Mayorkas, earlier named White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Homeland Security
President-elect Biden today named O’Melveny partner Lisa O. Monaco to serve as the 39th Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Once confirmed by the Senate, Monaco will serve as the Number 2 official and Chief Operating Officer of the US Department of Justice. She will advise and assist Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland in leading the DOJ’s more than 110,000 employees and $32 billion budget.
The official announcement by the Biden transition team is here.
Before joining O’Melveny, Monaco served as Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to President Obama from 2013 to 2017. She has built a distinguished career focused on national security, government affairs, cybersecurity, and safeguarding US interests on the international geopolitical stage.
Today’s appointment is a homecoming of sorts for Monaco, who spent 15 years at the Department of Justice and FBI from 1998 to 2013. As counsel and then Chief of Staff at the FBI, she helped then-Director Robert S. Mueller, III, transform the agency after 9/11 to focus on preventing terrorist attacks on the United States. In 2011, she was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the US Senate as Assistant Attorney General for National Security, the first woman to hold that position. Monaco also spent six years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
O’Melveny chair Bradley J. Butwin said, “Lisa Monaco is an inspired choice to serve as US Deputy Attorney General, and we are enormously proud of her. Lisa is a brilliant, hard-working, patriotic leader who possesses extraordinary judgment and embodies O’Melveny’s commitment to public service. The nation will greatly benefit from her leadership in this critical role.”
Monaco joins two former O’Melveny partners named to top leadership posts in the Biden Administration: incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain (a partner in Washington, DC, from 2001 to 2004) and Department of Homeland Security Secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas (a partner in Los Angeles from 2001 to 2009).
At O’Melveny, Monaco has served as co-chair of the firm’s Data Security and Privacy practice and worked closely with the White Collar Defense & Corporate Investigations group. She also led O’Melveny’s Coronavirus Task Force, drawing on her experience leading the Obama Administration’s Ebola task force, charged with coordinating with other international organizations to contain the 2014 outbreak.
O’Melveny Tradition
Public service has long been a crucial component of O’Melveny’s DNA. In addition to Monaco, Klain, and Mayorkas, O’Melveny lawyers past and present have served in senior roles in Democratic and Republican administrations, including:
Warren Christopher (former O’Melveny chair, US Secretary of State under President Clinton, and US Deputy Attorney General during Johnson Administration)
Thomas E. Donilon (former National Security Advisor under President Obama)
William T. Coleman Jr. (US Secretary of Transportation under President Ford and co-author of the legal brief in Brown v. Board of Education)
A.B. Culvahouse Jr. (former firm chair and White House Counsel to President Reagan, now US Ambassador to Australia)
Walter Dellinger (Acting Solicitor General during Clinton Administration)
Michael Dreeben (Deputy Solicitor General during Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations)
Brian P. Brooks (Acting Comptroller of the Currency in Trump Administration)
About O’Melveny
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