The U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division has added a partner from Jones Day's Washington office, just as the division is set to lose two senior officials.
Leslie Overton had a hand in several high-profile matters while at Jones Day, working on teams that represented XM Satellite Radio Holdings in its 2008 merger with Sirius Satellite Radio and Procter & Gamble Co. in its 2005 purchase of The Gillette Company.
She has prior experience in government, as counsel to the assistant attorney general for antitrust from 2002 to 2004. In 2008, Legal Times mentioned her as a possible nominee for chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, a job that went to Jon Leibowitz. Her husband, Spencer Overton, is a professor at George Washington University Law School who served in DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy and raised more than $500,000 for the president’s 2008 campaign.
Leslie Overton returns to DOJ as a special adviser to the assistant attorney general, a department spokeswoman said. Overton left Jones Day on July 8, according to a firm spokesman. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The move was first reported by Global Competition Review.
The hiring comes amid a turnover in leadership at DOJ’s antitrust office. Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney is scheduled to step down Aug. 5 to join Cravath, Swaine & Moore, while Katherine Forrest, one of Varney’s deputies and a former Cravath partner, has been nominated for a federal district judgeship in the Southern District of New York.
In interviews, lawyers in private practice have mentioned several possible nominees to succeed Varney. They include Arnold & Porter partner William Baer; Seth Bloom, general counsel to the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee; Sharis Pozen, Varney’s principal deputy; and Dewey & LeBoeuf partner David Turetsky, among others.
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has not said who will lead the office on an acting basis in Varney’s absence.
Updated at 4:13 p.m. with additional reporting. An earlier version of this post gave the wrong name for Global Competition Review.
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