President-elect Barack Obama continues to announce new staff members—even though he’s in Hawaii—and among them are a few more Washington lawyers.
Cassandra Butts, who has known Obama since Harvard Law School, will be deputy White House counsel. She is currently general counsel for the transition. Her previous jobs include senior vice president for domestic policy at the Center for American Progress, senior adviser to then-Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and legislative counsel to then-Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.).
Shawn Maher, a longtime aide to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), will be Obama’s deputy director of legislative affairs for the Senate. Most recently, he has served as staff director and general counsel to the Senate Banking Committee, which Dodd chairs. He has also been Dodd’s legislative director and his counsel when Dodd was chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
The names of two other D.C.-area lawyers have popped up recently. Peter Rundlet, former counsel to the 9/11 Commission, has been mentioned as a possible deputy staff secretary at the White House. Mark Childress, a Foley Hoag partner and former chief counsel to then-Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), has been mentioned as chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary-designate Daschle.
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