Newman Lawyer Who Battled DOJ Takes Senior Job at the Agency (1)

Greg Dolin, the lawyer who represented suspended Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman as she sought reinstatement, announced Monday he’s joined the Department of Justice as a senior counsel.

Dolin, a former clerk to the 98-year-old suspended judge, took on his old boss as a client while at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He represented Newman in her May 2023 suit against Chief Judge Kimberly A. Moore and the Judicial Council of the Federal Circuit challenging her benching for alleged mental impairments and her refusal to cooperate with an investigation.

The DOJ has represented Moore and the Judicial Council in the suit, which was dismissed by a district court judge. The US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the ruling last month while signaling the full court may have an appetite to consider Newman’s arguments en banc.

Dolin on Monday morning announced on LinkedIn that he’d started a job as senior counsel in the DOJ’s civil rights division. He told Bloomberg Law in a short message that NCLA would continue to represent Newman but that he could no longer comment on her case, having joined the federal government.

NCLA identifies as nonpartisan but is backed by several groups linked to powerful sources of conservative funding, including billionaire Charles Koch and entities linked to legal activist Leonard Leo.

The DOJ declined to comment.