FORA.tv Speaker - Thomas Griffith

Judge Thomas Griffith is a federal judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Prior to his nomination by President Bush in 2004, Judge Griffith served as Assistant to the President and General Counsel of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and General Counsel to the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce, which was created by Congress to study the implications of the growth of electronic commerce on tax policies for states and the Nation. Following graduation from law school, Judge Griffith became an associate with the law firm of Robinson, Bradshaw, and Hinson in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1989, he joined the Washington, D. C. law firm of Wiley, Rein, and Fielding as an associate. He was elected to the partnership of that firm in 1993. Mr. Griffith's practice involved commercial, corporate, employment, and First Amendment litigation, government investigations, and a significant pro bono representation of a death row inmate that led to a commutation of his sentence by the Governor of Virginia. In 1995, the U.S. Senate, by a unanimous resolution sponsored by the Republican and Democratic Leaders, appointed Judge Griffith to the non-partisan position of Senate Legal Counsel of the U.S., an office he held until 1999. As the chief legal officer of the U.S. Senate, Judge Griffith represented the Senate, its committees, Members, officers, and employees in litigation relating to their constitutional powers and privileges and advised committees about their investigatory powers and procedures. Judge Griffith represented the institutional interests of the Senate in the impeachment trial of President Clinton, the Line Item Veto Act litigation, which resulted in two landmark decisions by the Supreme Court of the U.S., and in numerous committee investigations. Following his service as Senate Legal Counsel, Judge Griffith returned to Wiley, Rein, and Fielding in 1999 where he was a partner in that firm's litigation and government affairs practices. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Brigham Young University and with High Honors with Distinction from its Honors Program. He earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a member of the editorial and articles review boards of the Virginia Law Review. Judge Griffith and his wife are natives of McLean, Virginia and were educated in the public schools of Fairfax County, Virginia.