US: Kellyanne Conway’s husband on short list for Solicitor General

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz litigation partner George T. Conway III is being considered to serve as US solicitor general in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, according to media reports.
Conway, reached after arriving in Washington on Saturday afternoon, declined to comment about his being a contender to lead the US Justice Department’s top appellate team. Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, first reported that Conway was being eyed for US solicitor general. A spokesperson for Trump’s transition was not immediately reached for comment.

Although Conway is connected to Trump’s transition team—his wife is Kellyanne Conway, who is set to become counselor to the president—his name was not one bandied about among the DC appellate bar in early December as a potential solicitor general pick. Those names included appellate veterans in Big Law.
Conway joined Wachtell in 1988 after a clerkship with Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A Wachtell partner since 1994, Conway has focused on corporate litigation, with an emphasis on securities, mergers and acquisitions, contracts and antitrust litigation.
A role as solicitor general would make him a regular before the US Supreme Court, which would not be completely foreign to him. Conway’s argued one case in the high court—Morrison v. National Australia Bank. The justices in 2010, handing a win to Conway’s client, restricted the global reach of US securities law. The court held that Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 does not apply extraterritorially to claims of so-called “foreign-cubed” plaintiffs—foreign investors who purchased securities of foreign issuers on foreign exchanges.

In 2015, Conway led Hewlett-Packard’s defense of a federal racketeering suit by Mexico’s state-owned oil-and-gas company, Petróleos Mexicanos, which had argued HP paid bribes to win government contracts. Conway and his team pointed to a Pemex internal investigation that found no wrongdoing. The company dropped the suit against HP.

In other matters, Conway represented Philip Morris in a defamation suit against ABC and the NFL in a trademark and antitrust matter against the Dallas Cowboys. He also has experience with Delaware corporate law, representing Rohm and Haas and ADVO in two separate Delaware Court of Chancery cases that sought to enforce merger agreements.

The chief judge of the State of New York and the New York Unified Court System hired Conway to represent them in constitutional litigation over the state’s failure to adjust judicial salaries.

Full Content: National Law Journal

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