WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler will rejoin Sidley Austin LLP as a partner, the firm has announced.

 

Keisler left Sidley in 2002, as a partner, to join the U.S. Department of Justice as principal deputy associate attorney general, and subsequently served as acting associate attorney general and as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division.  In September 2007, he was appointed by President Bush to serve as acting attorney general.  Keisler will become a global coordinator of the firm’s appellate practice and be in the Washington, D.C. , office.

 

Keisler has argued before the Supreme Court and numerous federal courts of appeals on a wide range of issues.  Keisler spent most of his years at the Department of Justice as the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division, the Justice Department’s largest litigating division with about 700 attorneys who represent the in federal and state courts throughout the country.  While at the Justice Department, Keisler argued a number of appeals on behalf of the involving issues of constitutional, statutory, regulatory and common law.

 

Keisler has also been nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  That nomination has been pending before the Senate for confirmation since June 2006.

 

Keisler, who started his career at Sidley as an associate in 1989, received both his B.A., magna cum laude, and J.D. from Yale, where he was an officer of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Judge Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit and then served as associate  counsel to President Reagan.  Before joining Sidley, he served as a law clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy.

 

Sidley Austin is one of the world's largest full-service law firms, with more than 1,800 lawyers practicing in 16 U.S. and international cities, including Beijing, Brussels, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hong Kong, London, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.