Trump nominates former Jones Day partner Noel Francisco as solicitor general
President Donald Trump. JStone / Shutterstock, Inc.
Noel Francisco, a former partner Jones Day partner, has been nominated by President Donald Trump as solicitor general.
Francisco currently serves as the administration’s acting solicitor general, the National Law Journal reports. Francisco is one of more than 12 Jones Day attorneys tapped for the positions in the president’s administration.
Francisco, a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, argued three U.S. Supreme Court cases while he was at Jones Day—McDonnell v. United States (PDF), which dealt with federal bribery laws; Zubik v. Burwell (PDF), which involved contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and NLRB v. Noel Canning, a separation-of-powers case.
Francisco is a 1996 graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law, according to his Justice Department biography. He also clerked for 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, and was a deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. Additionally, Francisco worked in the Office of Counsel to the President as Associate Counsel during the George W. Bush administration.
Prior to announcing Francisco’s nomination, Trump considered George Conway and Chuck Cooper for the solicitor general position, Politico reported. Conway, a corporate partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, is also the husband of presidential senior adviser Kellyanne Conway. Cooper, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who handles U.S. Supreme Court cases, is friends with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and he withdrew from consideration in February after criticizing the Senate’s treatment of Sessions at confirmation hearings, Politico reported at the time.
