WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Jeffrey Rosen, a longtime litigator and deputy transportation secretary, to replace Rod Rosenstein as deputy attorney general.
In his current post, the 60-year-old Rosen serves as the Department of Transportation’s chief operating officer and is in charge of implementing the department’s safety and technological priorities. He rejoined DOT in 2017 after previously serving as general counsel from 2003 to 2006.
From 2006 until 2009, Rosen was the general counsel and a senior policy adviser at the White House Office of Management and Budget. He also worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
Rosen held a variety of positions, including senior partner, at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, the same law firm as the new attorney general, William Barr. Rosen spent nearly 30 years at Kirkland & Ellis in a variety of management roles, including acting as the co-head of the firm’s Washington, D.C., office, he told senators at his confirmation hearing in March 2017.
The current deputy attorney general, Rosenstein, is expected to leave his post in mid-March.
His departure had been expected since Barr was confirmed as attorney general last week. Rosenstein had served as deputy for almost two years and it is common for new attorneys general to have their own deputies. Barr told people close to him that he wanted his own No. 2 as part of taking the attorney general job.
Rosenstein began overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation. Barr now has control of Mueller’s investigation, which is probing Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and contacts with the Trump campaign.
Rosen, a Virginia resident who is married with three adult children, is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
