Brett Kavanaugh Judge Brett Kavanaugh addresses the assembled audience in the East Room of the White House moments after President Donald Trump nominated him to the high court. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ NLJ

A former law clerk to then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Anthony Kennedy has received the Trump administration's nod to serve on the federal trial bench in Kentucky.

Justin Walker, a litigator at Dinsmore & Shohl who also teaches at Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville, was picked for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky.

He was part of the wave of former Kavanaugh clerks who publicly backed his nomination last year to the U.S. Supreme Court. Walker made dozens of local and national media appearances. At the request of Kavanaugh, Walker attended the Trump administration's nomination announcement at the White House in July. Walker clerked for Kavanaugh in 2010-2011.

“As a former clerk for Judge Brett Kavanaugh and a native-born Kentuckian, I believe Kavanaugh will be an excellent Supreme Court justice who is right for America and right for Kentucky,” Walker said in op-ed at the Lexington Herald-Leader in August. “He has been a leading voice for individual liberty and presidential accountability, and his qualifications and character are unsurpassed.”

In an interview with The National Law Journal before Kavanaugh's nomination, Walker tried to dispel any notion that Kavanaugh would disappoint conservatives. “I would bet the farm that Judge Kavanaugh would not go wobbly” on key conservative issues, Walker said. “He doesn't have a wobbly bone in his body.”

Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court came after a bruising hearing, where he was accused, as a Maryland high school student, of sexually assaulting a teenage girl. Kavanaugh denied the misconduct claims, and he would apologize for angry testimony in which he claimed Democrats upset with Hillary Clinton's presidential election loss to Donald Trump had conspired against him.

“You know, I'm not a detective. What I am is a former clerk and a former student of Judge Kavanaugh who, over the course of 10 years, has come to believe that he would not lie to get a job,” Walker told a Kentucky media outlet after Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, testified. Blasey Ford recounted with certainty that Kavanaugh assaulted her. Thousands of female lawyers joined together in a letter supporting Blasey Ford.

Last September, Walker was a speaker at a Federalist Society event in Indiana titled “The Kavanaugh Nomination and the Future of the U.S. Supreme Court.” Walker recently posted a new law article that argues the Supreme Court, with Kavanaugh sitting on the bench, will show less deference to federal agencies.

Walker clerked for Kennedy during the 2011-2012 term. His co-clerks that term were Ishan Bhabha, Leah Litman and Eric Nguyen. Bhabha is now a partner in Washington at Jenner & Block, and Nguyen formerly worked at Kirkland & Ellis before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington. Litman is a constitutional law scholar at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

After his Kennedy clerkship, Walker joined the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Walker was one of two Supreme Court clerks to join the firm in 2012, a time when Big Law was paying upwards of $280,000 signing bonuses for high-court clerks.

At Dinsmore & Shohl, Walker, a native of Kentucky, focuses on commercial and appellate litigation. Walker is a 2009 graduate of Harvard Law School. He joined the faculty of Brandeis School of Law in 2015.

 

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