President Donald Trump on Tuesday officially announced that he would nominate Eugene Scalia — a well-known labor, employment and regulatory lawyer, and son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — as the next labor secretary.
Trump said in July shortly after the resignation of Alexander Acosta that he planned to nominate the 55-year-old for the job. Since then, Scalia has been meeting with lawmakers and other officials in preparation for an upcoming Senate confirmation hearing.
Patrick Pizzella, the department’s deputy labor secretary, has served as acting labor secretary since Acosta’s department.
Scalia is currently a partner in the Washington office of the international law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he has represented a range of clients, including Wal-Mart and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He previously held several posts with the federal government, starting in the 1980s as a speechwriter for Education Secretary William Bennett. From 1992 to 1993, Scalia was a special assistant to Attorney General William Barr. In 2001, Scalia joined the Department of Labor as solicitor of labor, who serves as the department’s chief legal officer with responsibility over litigation and for advising the labor secretary.
Scalia has recently been a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a federal agency that makes recommendations to Congress and the executive branch on ways to improve the administrative process.
