Five Facts About the Newly Confirmed U.S. Solicitor General

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Noel Francisco as solicitor general of the United States, the government’s top lawyer at the U.S. Supreme Court.

For those who aren’t familiar with Francisco or need a brushing up, Big Law Business has gone ahead and laid out five facts about the man you may not know.

Francisco comes to the job after serving as deputy solicitor general and acting solicitor general after President Trump took office.

Before joining the DOJ this year, he worked at Jones Day from 2005 to 2017, spending nearly 10 years as a partner .

[caption id="attachment_57673" align="aligncenter” width="320"][Image “Solicitor General nominee, Noel Francisco attends his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, on May 10, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)” (src=https://bol.bna.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/GettyImages-681558324.jpg)]Solicitor General Noel Francisco. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)[/caption]

Francisco has spent his career cycling between the private and public sectors. From 1997 to 1998 he served as a law clerk to Antonin Scalia. He later worked in George W. Bush’s White House, where he was associate counsel to the president from 2001 until 2003. He advised the president on judicial and executive branch appointments, executive orders and questions of constitutional and international law.

Francisco will take on his role as solicitor general in the midst of the Trump administration’s ongoing fight for its hallmark travel ban, which had a victory recently when restrictions were loosened around the order.

The fight will heat up again when the court hears arguments in October. Here are five highlights from Francisco’s career:

• Francisco was raised in Oswego, New York. His father, a filipino immigrant, moved the family to the small city upstate to pursue a career as a doctor. As of March of this year, his mother, Therese Francisco, still lives in Oswego, according to the website,Syracuse.com .

• Francisco received his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1996, while Barack Obama was a lecturer at the school. After graduating, he clerked for fourth circuit appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig and later, supreme court justice Antonin Scalia. During this time, he met senator Ted Cruz , and the two became friends. Cruz has called Francisco a “lawyer’s lawyer,” and a“principled conservative.”

• According to Francisco’s answers to asenate questionnaire ,he and other attorneys from Cooper, Carvin & Rosenthal drafted briefs and other pleadings for the Bush-Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000. Shortly after, he spent a brief period of time on the transition team and later served as assistant counsel in the office of counsel to the president.

• Francisco served on the legal team ofBob McDonnell ,a former Virginia governor who was convicted on corruption charges in 2014 after accepting about $177,000 in cash, loans and gifts from a businessman. McDonnell appealed the conviction up to the Supreme Court and Francisco and the legal team persuaded the court to grant certiorari and vacate and remand the ruling against McDonnell. He has also represented IBM, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and in 2013, a group of religious organizations who were fighting legal obligations that required them to cover some contraceptives as part of their health plans.

• Francisco will be the first Asian American senate-confirmed solicitor general.

Write to the reporter at maxsiegelbaum@gmail.com.

Write to the editor at csullivan@bloomberglaw.com.