U.S. Chamber Fills Role of Legal Chief Who Quit to Help Cheney

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has appointed Harold Kim to serve as acting general counsel after the former legal chief left to advise Rep. Liz Cheney on an inquiry into the Capitol Hill attack last year.

A prominent critic of the plaintiffs’ bar, Kim has been president of the chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform since 2020. He’ll serve as interim legal chief while the chamber searches for a permanent general counsel to replace John Wood, who left after more than three years in the top legal post.

Wood joined the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack as its senior investigative counsel and of counsel to its vice chair, Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel announced in September. He’s part of a probe of former President Donald Trump’s inner circle, the New York Times reported.

The change in legal department leadership, confirmed by chamber spokeswoman Shira Rawlinson, comes nearly a year after a switch in chief executive officers. Suzanne Clark became the first woman to lead the business lobbying organization when she replaced Tom Donohue.

Bush Alumnus

Kim is a former senior litigation associate at what is now Squire Patton Boggs, a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a past special assistant to President George W. Bush in the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs.

He joined the chamber a dozen years ago and served in a variety of legal roles for the Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate that is a proponent for civil justice and tort reform, as well as an opponent of litigation finance.

Kim, in his role as president of the institute, received more than $1 million in total compensation during 2020, per the organization’s most recent federal tax filing.

He also oversees the Chamber Litigation Center, whose website states it is staffed by 10 in-house lawyers, four of whom are former U.S. Supreme Court clerks. The center serves as a public policy law firm that pushes pro-business causes in court.

Big Legal Bills

The center’s latest tax filing shows it paid the following for legal policy and consulting work in 2020: $394,000 to Mayer Brown; $360,000 to Baker Botts; $135,000 to Jones Day; $132,500 to King & Spalding; and $127,500 to Morrison & Foerster.

Steven Lehotsky, a former chief litigation counsel for the center and the chamber, was paid more than $503,000 for his services that year. He left in 2021 to form his own Washington-based litigation boutique.

In November, the center brought on in-house counsel Tyler Badgley, who spent the past three years as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell in Washington.

The chamber’s institute, meanwhile, also paid for legal help. A federal tax filing for 2020 shows that it paid $266,000 to Shook, Hardy & Bacon; $232,600 to Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; $215,000 to Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and $170,000 to Hunton Andrews Kurth for legal research and consulting fees.

Wood’s Role

The chamber hired Wood, a litigator and former chairman of the defense industry practice at Hughes Hubbard & Reed in Kansas City, Mo., and Washington, to be its general counsel in 2018. He said that same year he wanted to increase the profile of the Chamber’s litigation arm.

Wood received nearly $317,000 from the chamber after being hired in 2018, per the organization’s most recent federal tax filing. He succeeded the chamber’s former general counsel, Lily Fu Claffee, who was paid nearly $1 million that year.

Claffee, who left the chamber to become general counsel for Fox News, last year took on a new top legal job at financial services company OneMain Holdings Inc.

Wood, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, is also an alumnus of the George W. Bush administration, as he served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during the president’s second term.

In working with Cheney, he has aligned himself with one of the most vocal Republicans to criticize the actions of Trump over the riot that took place on Capitol Hill last year.

The Republican National Committee censured Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), the only other Republican on the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee, earlier this month. Kinzinger isn’t running for reelection this year but hasn’t ruled out a potential future campaign for public office.

Another former federal prosecutor advising the Jan. 6 committee is former Hunton Andrews Kurth partner Timothy Heaphy. In January, Heaphy was fired from his role as chief counsel to the University of Virginia following a gubernatorial change.