By Mike Scarcella
(Reuters) – A longtime attorney at Washington law firm Jones Day is taking a top role in the U.S. Justice Department’s civil division, where he will be part of a core group defending Republican U.S. President Donald Trump’s domestic policy agenda.
The lawyer, Yaakov Roth, will serve as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil division, a person familiar with the move said.
Roth will also temporarily lead the civil division while the U.S. Senate weighs the Trump administration’s nomination of Brett Shumate, another former Jones Day partner, to serve as assistant attorney general in charge of the division, the person said.
The civil division is the largest in the Justice Department and is defending the Trump White House’s efforts to end automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, stop federal support for healthcare that aids gender transitions and dramatically freeze spending across federal agencies.
Roth declined to comment. A Justice Department spokesperson and the head of Jones Day’s Washington office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jones Day, a 2,400-lawyer firm known for its corporate defense work, represented Trump in his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Several lawyers at the firm served in senior White House and Justice Department roles in Trump’s first administration.
At Jones Day, Roth argued and won three cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. In one, he convinced the high court in 2022 to limit the power of federal agencies to curb fossil fuel emissions.
Roth is a former law clerk to late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He will join at least one other Jones Day attorney besides Shumate in the civil division, Harry Graver, a former clerk to Justice Brett Kavanaugh who is serving as a counsel to Shumate.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Diane Craft)
