He won prestigious clerkship with Henry J. Friendly, a federal judge of appeals, and Judge William J. Brennan Jr. He jumped between prestigious jobs in the private and public sector before ending up at the Department of Justice, where Mrs. Gorelick made. him her deputy.
Judge Garland and his wife of 33 years, Lynn Garland, live in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md. From 2020, its financial disclosure forms list assets from $ 8.6 million to $ 32.9 million, including trust funds raised by Ms.’s parents. Garland was founded. He keeps a wide collection of friends, is a well-known presence at Washington dinners and parties and tells of his former clerks.
One former clerk, Karen Dunn, now a lawyer in Washington, remembers how the Garlands unexpectedly descended on her with a fully prepared dinner when she came out of the hospital after the birth of her first child. “They brought food, sat down and ate it with us, cleaned everything and then left,” Dunn recalled.
Judge Garland is now awaiting confirmation from the Senate, given history probably does not have his favorite combination of words. But it is not expected that serious opposition will be faced by his nomination. Several Republican senators said at the time that their blockade of Judge Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016 was ‘not personal’, for whatever it was worth. (Not much, per friends.)
On Friday, a large and dual group of former Justice Department officials and former federal judges sent two letters to Senate leaders urging the speedy confirmation of Judge Garland. Among them were four former attorneys general: Alberto R. Gonzales and Michael B. Mukasey, who served in the George W. Bush administration, and Eric H. Holder Jr. and Loretta Lynch, who served in the Obama administration. The group also included Ken Starr, the independent lawyer in the Whitewater investigation.
At the very least, friends have said that the fact that he will become attorney general would free Judge Garland from the reputation purgatory by being tried in his high court. “It’s interesting how fate sometimes works out,” said J. Gilmore Childers, a lawyer and colleague in Oklahoma City. “Merrick Garland may be the perfect person to do this job at this particular moment.”