In spring 2021, President Joe Biden selected a broad range of NYU alumni, faculty, and scholars to fill positions in his administration. Among those he nominated or appointed to new government roles were these members of the Law School community:
Lily Batchelder, Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation, has been nominated as assistant secretary for tax policy in the Treasury Department. Batchelder served from 2010 to 2014 as the majority chief tax counsel for the US Senate Finance Committee, and then joined the Obama White House as deputy director of the National Economic Council and deputy assistant to the President.
Bob Bauer, professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence, co-chairs the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Former White House counsel in the Obama Administration, Bauer is co-director of NYU Law’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic and the co-author, with Jack Goldsmith, of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency (2020).
Nadiya Beckwith-Stanley ’16, LLM ’17, a policy advisor on the Biden-Harris Transition and a former tax associate at Skadden, Slate, Arps, Meagher & Flom, was named special assistant to the President for budget and tax policy.
Sean Burton ’97, chairman and CEO of real estate investment firm Cityview, has been nominated to the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Burton is president of the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners and previously served on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission.
John Coates ’89, John F. Cogan Jr. Professor of Law and Economics and vice dean for finance and strategic initiatives at Harvard University, was named general counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Lynn Eisenberg ’12 is general counsel at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Before serving as deputy general counsel for the Biden-Harris campaign and counsel to the Biden-Harris transition team, Eisenberg was counsel in the Strategic Response group of the Washington, D.C. office of WilmerHale.
Beth George ’10, formerly a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, is acting general counsel at the US Department of Defense. A nonresident senior fellow at NYU Law’s Reiss Center on Law and Security, George previously served as deputy general counsel at the US Department of Defense.
Vanita Gupta ’01, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, has been confirmed by the US Senate as associate attorney general at the US Department of Justice. Former acting assistant attorney general and head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Gupta has served on NYU Law’s Board of Trustees.
Seth D. Harris ’90, the Biden-Harris campaign’s principal labor policy advisor, was named deputy assistant to the president for labor and economy. A visiting professor at Cornell University’s Institute for Public Affairs, Harris served as acting secretary of the US Department of Labor and deputy secretary of labor from 2009 to 2014.
David Hayes, executive director of NYU Law’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center and an adjunct professor at the Law School, was named special assistant to the president for climate policy. He previously served as the deputy secretary at the US Department of the Interior for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Jayni Foley Hein, natural resources director at NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity and an adjunct professor at the Law School, was named senior director for NEPA and counsel in the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Hein formerly worked as executive director of UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment.
Sherrilyn Ifill ’87, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., serves on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Ifill is an NYU Law trustee and a former faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore.
David Kamin ’09, professor of law, was named deputy director of the National Economic Council in the White House. Kamin worked in the Obama administration as special assistant to the President for economic policy, and as a special assistant, and later adviser, to the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Elizabeth Klein, former deputy director of NYU Law’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center, was named senior counselor to the secretary of the interior.
Jacob Leibenluft, a research fellow at NYU Law’s Institute for Corporate Governance & Finance and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has been named counselor to the secretary at the US Department of the Treasury. Between 2011 and 2016, he served in the White House in positions that included deputy director of the National Economic Council and deputy assisant to the President for economic policy.
Margaret Lemos ’01, the Robert G. Seaks LL.B. ’34 Professor of Law at Duke Law School, serves on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. A former law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens and a former Furman academic fellow, Lemos is senior associate dean for faculty and research and faculty co-advisor for the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School.
Emily Loeb ’09, formerly a partner at Jenner & Block, serves in the US Justice Department as associate deputy attorney general. A former associate counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office, Loeb co-chaired Jenner’s government controversies and public policy litigation practice.
Anne Milgram ’96, formerly professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at NYU Law, is administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration of the US Department of Justice. A former state and federal prosecutor, Milgram served as New Jersey’s attorney general from 2007 to 2010.
Lisa Monaco, formerly a distinguished senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security and adjunct professor of law, is deputy attorney general in the US Department of Justice. Monaco served in the Obama White House as assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism; previously she worked as a prosecutor and in senior management positions in the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Trevor Morrison, Dean of NYU Law and Eric M. and Laurie B. Roth Professor of Law, serves on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. A former law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Morrison previously held faculty appointments at Cornell Law School and Columbia Law School, and served as associate White House counsel.
Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, serves on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. A former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, Pildes established the law of democracy as a field of study in law schools through his scholarship on the political process, including his casebooks, The Law of Democracy and When Elections Go Bad.
Michael Posada ’12, senior counsel for labor and employment for the Biden-Harris campaign and a former counsel at WilmerHale, was named associate counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office. Posada served as a law clerk for Judge Analisa Torres of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York and Judge Margaret Ryan of the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.
Jessica Rosenworcel ’97, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), was named acting FCC chairwoman. Before joining the FCC, she was senior communications counsel for the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Richard Sauber ’77, formerly a name partner at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck & Untereiner & Sauber, is now general counsel at the Department of Veteran Affairs. A former federal prosecutor, Sauber was previously a partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, chairing the firm’s Washington, DC litigation department.
Robert Silvers ’06, formerly a partner at Paul Hastings, is under secretary for strategy, policy, and plans in the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). During the Obama administration, Silvers served as DHS deputy chief of staff and then as assistant secretary for cyber policy. He teaches as an adjunct professor in the MS in Cybersecurity Risk and Strategy Program co-offered by NYU Law and NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Michael Waldman ’87, president of NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, serves on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United State. The author of The Fight to Vote and The Second Amendment: A Biography, Waldman served as director of speechwriting for President Bill Clinton.
Jenny Yang ’96, nonresident fellow in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population at the Urban Institute and former US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chair, was named director of the US Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.
Avi Zevin ’13, formerly energy policy counsel at Google Inc., was named deputy general counsel for energy policy in the US Department of Energy. From 2017 to 2020, he worked as a senior attorney at NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity.
Posted April 20, 2021; updated April 21, 2021; May 6, 2021; and August 18, 2021.