Scratch One SG Contender Off the List, and Move Another to the Top
A job move has some people speculating that acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal could stay in the spot permanently. But there is no need for pundits to consider the chances of Gov. Chris Gregoire.
The Washington governor has informed the White House she’s not interested in the job, the Seattle Times reports. Gregoire was on the list of possible solicitor general candidates, but she took herself out of contention Tuesday.
Gregoire had expressed reservations in an interview last week. “I really can’t think of a worse time for a governor to leave the state,” she told the newspaper. “It has nothing to do with me. Any governor.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has made a “surprise appointment” for the post of acting principal deputy solicitor general, according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. Leondra Kruger, a 34-year-old assistant to the solicitor general who has argued six cases, got the nod.
The appointment came as a surprise because acting solicitor generals don’t usually name acting principal deputies, the BLT says. Some have speculated Kruger’s appointment is a sign that Katyal will stay in the solicitor general job.
Kruger, a Yale law grad who joined the office in 2007, was formerly a clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens, an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago law school.
