White House Counsel Taps Two Former N.Y. Prosecutors

[maddezmom]

Source: Legal Times

Alumni of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York are wont to tell anyone who'll listen that the office is home to the Justice Department's best and brightest.

White House counsel Fred Fielding apparently agrees, having just hired two additional former Southern District lawyers to help try to beat back a gathering storm of congressional subpoenas.

Joining Fielding's office is former organized crime prosecutor Michael Purpura, who will become associate counsel, and former corporate fraud prosecutor William Burck, whose title will be special counsel to the president. Both left Manhattan earlier this decade to take posts in Washington.

Most recently, Purpura was a senior counsel to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and Burck was a legal adviser to Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher in the Criminal Division and previously was deputy staff secretary at the White House.

At the White House Counsel's Office, they'll join another SDNY alum, Michael Scudder Jr., who was hired as associate counsel earlier this year.

But the hiring may not yet be over: Fielding's No. 2, William Kelley, is rumored to be returning to his old job at Notre Dame Law School in the near future.


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