Philip Perry

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Philip J. Perry (born 1964, San Diego County, California) is an American attorney and Bush Administration political appointee. He was Acting Associate Attorney General at the Department of Justice, General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, and General Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security. Perry is a member of the Federalist Society. He is currently a partner at Latham & Watkins in their litigation department.

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[edit] Career

Perry graduated from Colorado College in 1986 and from Cornell Law School in 1990.

Perry was a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C. with a practice in commercial litigation and federal administrative law. In 1997-98, Perry was Counsel to the United States Senate hearings on campaign finance abuses in the 1996 Presidential campaigns. In 2000, he was a policy advisor for the Bush-Cheney presidential transition team and an advisor on the Vice Presidential Debate preparation team.

Perry joined the Department of Justice and served in a number of roles before being named acting Associate Attorney General (the Department’s third-ranking official), overseeing five DOJ legal units. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Perry also advised the Attorney General on issues relating to the government response and the War on Terrorism and the Victims Compensation Fund. He then moved to the White House to be General Counsel for the Office of Management and Budget. Among his tasks was drafting the blueprint for the new Department of Homeland Security.

In 2003, while at the OMB, Perry was the Administration's lead negotiator attempting to pass legislation to impose security mandates on the chemical sector. After five years of failing to pass such a bill, Congress ultimately succeeded in passing legislation as part of a Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill that granted DHS new authority. This new authority was later implemented through Department regulations and had the effect of superseding state regulations but only to the extent the state regulations conflicted with the federal regulatory mandates.[1]

In 2003, he left the government and returned to Latham & Watkins as a partner, where he joined their Homeland Security practice group, serving as counsel on behalf of Fortune 500 clients and handling litigation matters. His Latham salary reportedly topped $700,000.

In 2005 he was nominated as General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security to succeed Joe Whitley. In that position, Perry supervised over 1,500 lawyers, and advised Secretary Michael Chertoff and the White House on the Department's legal and policy issues. He had substantial involvement in the passage of legislation authorizing DHS to regulate chemical site security. Chertoff is a former partner at Latham.

On February 6, 2007, Perry left DHS and returned to Latham & Watkins, where he will handle high profile litigation, federal regulatory matters and chair the firm's Public Policy Practice Group.

[edit] Personal life

Perry married fellow CC alum Elizabeth Cheney in 1993; they have five children. Cheney, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, is the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Perry is no longer eligible to practice law in his home state of California

[edit] References

  1. ^ Dick Cheney’s Dangerous Son-In-Law - Art Levine

[edit] External links