C. Boyden Gray, February 6, 1943 - May 21, 2023

My friend Boyden Gray died today. A lot has been and will be written about what he did for the country, and rightly he’ll be remembered for that. But I want to say a word about what he did for me, because he gave me the two most important chances of my adult life, and he did it with the easy generosity and graciousness that marked every step he ever took.

I looked up to Boyden. It was natural. In fact, it was necessary. He was six-foot-six and I’m five-foot-seven. I met him in the White House almost exactly 31 years ago, in the administration of George H. W. Bush.

Boyden was Counsel to the President, and had been with Bush for all eight years of his Vice Presidency under Ronald Reagan. I was an appellate lawyer for the US Attorney’s Office — successful enough in my little pond, but nobody in particular. I wound up talking to Boyden in the White House because Counsel’s Office needed an extra pair of hands to deal with a raft of largely silly subpoenas from Congress. The White House wanted to borrow a lawyer from DOJ to deal with this mess, and called then-Attorney General Bill Barr to see if he could come up with someone. Through a series of serendipitous coincidences, I was the guy DOJ sent over.

I talked to a couple of Boyden’s Assistant Counsels first, then was sent up to his office to meet him. Of course he didn’t know me from Adam, nor I him. I noticed that he had a North Carolina accent, however, which I recognized because I had been an undergrad at UNC, and because my aunt and uncle, Dr. and Mrs. Fred Patterson, whom I visited often in my childhood, lived in Chapel Hill. I asked Boyden if he was from Carolina and he said yes. I then took a flier and asked him if he knew Dr. Fred in that (then) little college town. He broke into a big smile and said, “Oh sure. Dr. Fred was my pediatrician.” To which I replied, “That’s cool. Dr. Fred is my uncle.”

And that’s how I wound up in the White House. As “Special Counsel to the President,” no less (although I was actually the lowest man on the totem pole).

From that point on, Boyden and I were just a couple of good, ole’ Carolina boys. Boyden was a man of great distinction and achievement, as you might imagine — first in his class in law school, a clerk to Chief Justice Earl Warren, and a rainmaker at perhaps the most powerful firm in DC, Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering. He was also enormously wealthy — his family owned R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. among other things. But he always treated me like I was just a buddy from down home. He was humble and gracious and funny and incredibly generous. And he could tell you some dinner yarns that would have you in stitches.

So it was Boyden who gave me the second most significant break of my adult life, bringing me from the US Attorney’s Office to, of all things, the White House. The most important break was also there at the White House. It was my immediate superior, former Scalia clerk and Associate White House Counsel Lee Liberman. The next year, she became Lee Liberman Otis.

So the most important good things that happened to me after law school, professionally and personally, were both because of Boyden, the man who gave a chance to a DOJ brief writer who basically walked in off the street.

One can debate from among many candidates Boyden’s foremost public achievement, but my candidate (that I suspect many would share) would be his work in securing the nomination and confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. The opposition was determined and vicious, as it still is, but neither Boyden nor the President ever wavered. All their steadfastness was needed. Thomas was confirmed 52-48.

There was one other, less well known selection where Boyden was key. Picking US Attorneys is largely a prerogative of officeholders of the President’s party, but there was one particularly able candidate Boyden saw and persuaded the President to nominate despite less than fully enthusiastic backing from some Republican officials in the candidate’s state, New Jersey. The candidate’s work as US Attorney turned out to be so outstanding that, a couple of years later, the President successfully nominated him to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He served there until 2006, when the President’s son, George W. Bush, put Sam Alito on the Supreme Court.

Boyden Gray, RIP.