Brett Kavanaugh. (Photo: Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg)

Updated Oct. 8

During his confirmation hearing, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh boasted that he would be the first justice at the U.S. Supreme Court to hire only women to fill his four clerkship spots.

The four women who will jump into work this week for the new justice arrive with appellate court clerking experience for some of the country's most prominent conservative judges. Only one of the clerks previously worked in the chambers of Kavanaugh, elevated to the high court from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Kavanaugh's D.C. Circuit clerks played an outsized role in advocating for his confirmation to the Supreme Court, and they would stand by him as allegations of sexual misconduct roiled his proceedings. Kavanaugh denied sexually assaulting a fellow high school student, Christine Blasey Ford, in the 1980s, and he was confirmed Saturday in a 50-48 vote in the U.S. Senate, the narrowest margin for any modern Supreme Court nominee.

What follows are some biographical details of his Supreme Court clerks, whose names were reported Sunday by The New York Times and confirmed by The National Law Journal.

>> Shannon Grammel, a 2017 Stanford Law School graduate, was a summer associate in 2016 at the firms Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She was a member of the law school's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, where she worked closely with the veteran Supreme Court advocate Jeff Fisher. Grammel was a clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Wilkinson is widely known as a leading conservative thinker and a leading “feeder” judge, sending clerks to the Supreme Court.

>> Megan Lacy is a 2010 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. She clerked in 2013-2014 for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She formerly was a counsel to Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who headed the Supreme Court confirmation process for Kavanaugh. She joins Kavanaugh at the Supreme Court from the White House, where she was working on his confirmation with White House Counsel Donald McGahn. Lacy also was formerly a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis.

>>  Since September, Sara Nommensen, a 2016 Harvard Law graduate, has been an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, under the leadership of former Dechert partner Steven Engel.  She was a student of Kavanaugh's while at Harvard Law School and signed a letter with other former Kavanaugh students in support of his nomination. Nommensen was the vice president of social activities at the Harvard Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Nommensen clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, according to Above the Law.

>> Kim Jackson, a 2017 Yale Law School graduate and an African American woman, clerked for Kavanaugh this past year on the D.C. Circuit. She also was one of his former clerks to sign a letter supporting his high court nomination. Above the Law reported that Jackson clerked for U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich on Washington's federal trial court. Friedrich was a Trump nominee to the bench, and she has ties to Kavanaugh: Friedrich dated him years ago. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Friedrich, responding to an anonymous complaint, said Kavanaugh was never abusive to her.

Kavanaugh's former clerks played a prominent role in advocating for his confirmation to the Supreme Court throughout the intense process. Two days after Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination was announced, his former clerks rallied around him. Thirty-four of them signed a letter attesting to his character and intellectual abilities.

Eighteen of his former female clerks also sent a letter of support to the Senate Judiciary Committee in which they wrote: “It is not an exaggeration to say that we would not be the professors, prosecutors, public officials, and appellate advocates we are today without his enthusiastic encouragement and unwavering support.”

Most of the female clerks publicly stood by Kavanaugh after claims emerged that he sexually assaulted a fellow high school student at a house party in Maryland in the 1980s. Kavanaugh denied the accusations, calling them, in a partisan diatribe, part of an “orchestrated” plot by Democrats to derail his confirmation.

After the alleged sexual assault claim became public and Kavanaugh and Ford testified in a public hearing Sept. 27, three former clerks, in a letter to the Senate committee, said they were “deeply troubled” by the accusation and supported an FBI investigation. FBI investigators did not interview Kavanaugh or Ford as part of the renewed background investigation into the sexual assault allegations.

“We write to clarify that, like many Americans, we have been deeply troubled by those allegations and the events surrounding them and were encouraged by the initiation of a formal FBI investigation, which we believe is warranted. We hope, for the good of everyone involved, that this investigation will be independent and thorough,” wrote Will Dreher, a Jenner & Block associate; Bridget Fahey, a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania law school, and Rakim Brooks, a fellow at New York-based civil rights firm Neufeld Scheck & Brustin.

On the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh hired 25 women and 23 men as law clerks. His four clerks from 2014 to 2015 were women, and 21 of the 25 he hired went on to U.S. Supreme Court clerkships. His 48 clerks represented diverse backgrounds and viewpoints.

With Kavanaugh's elevation, law school graduates lose an opportunity for an appellate clerkship with one of the top “feeder judges” to the justices who are now his colleagues.

Kavanaugh sent 39 of his 48 clerks to the Supreme Court, including clerks serving justices in the current term. Although most of those clerks have gone to the conservative justices—with Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. hiring 13, the largest number—Kavanaugh sent two each to justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and one to Stephen Breyer. No former Kavanaugh clerk has gone on to clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And as with all of his new colleagues, Kavanaugh hired graduates primarily from Yale, his alma mater, and Harvard law schools.

 

Read more:

Brett Kavanaugh, Neutrality Questioned, Ascends to Supreme Court

Female Clerks Stand by Kavanaugh Despite Assault Allegation

Lisa Blatt's Kavanaugh Endorsement Earns a Susan Collins Shoutout in 'Yes' Vote

Appellate Lawyers Who Backed Kavanaugh Say He's Still Their Man

Nearly 2,000 Female Lawyers Voice Support for Christine Blasey Ford