Leonard Leo

Leo was born on Long Island, New York in 1965, and raised in suburban New Jersey to a family of practicing Catholics. His grandfather, an Italian immigrant, was a vice-president of Brooks Brothers.[4] [3] He attended Cornell University,[3] graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1986, and working as an intern in the office of Senator Orrin Hatch.[4] Leo completed a J.D. degree at Cornell Law School in 1989, then clerked for federal judge A. Raymond Randolph of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.[5][4][3]

While studying law at Cornell, Leo founded a student chapter of the Federalist Society in 1989, and subsequently went to work for the Society in 1991 in Washington, D.C.[4]

Leo served as National Co-Chairman of Catholic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, and as the 2004 Bush presidential campaign's Catholic Strategist. He was appointed by President George W. Bush and the United States Senate to three terms on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.[6] He has been a U.S. Delegate to the UN Council and UN Commission on Human Rights as well as the Organization of Security and Cooperation and World Health Assembly. Leo has served as an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization and as a member of the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO.

Leo organized efforts in support of the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.[3][7][8] He received the 2009 Bradley Prize.[9]

Leo has been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Huffington Post.[10][11][12] He is a board member of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.[13][14]

He met Clarence Thomas while clerking in the Appeals Court and the two became close friend. Leo delayed his start at the Federalist Society to assist Thomas in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.[3]

In 2003, when George W. Bush intended to criticize the practice of affirmative action in a speech but praise racial diversity, Leo called White House officials to complain. Leo said that the praise for racial diversity would "disgust any conservative who thinks that this is a matter of principle."[3] Leo told the Washington Post, he "was conveying the widely shared belief among conservatives that discriminating on the basis of race is always wrong and inconsistent with the dignity and worth of every person."[3] Leo helped to push the Bush administration's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the judiciary.[3]

In 2012, Leo was on the boards of the Catholic Association and its affiliate Catholic Association Foundation.[3] These two organizations ran campaigns opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage.[3]

In 2016, after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Leo helped arrange funding to rename George Mason University's Law School the Antonin Scalia Law School.[15] Leo was also identified by 2017 Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch as the person who first contacted Gorsuch about the possibility of President Donald Trump appointing Gorsuch to the seat vacated by Scalia's death.[16]

In 2019, The Washington Post wrote of Leo, "few people outside government have more influence over judicial appointments now than Leo."[3] Between 2014 and 2017, Leo raised more than $250 million in "dark money" donations (donations where donors do not have to disclose their identity), which was in part used to support conservative policies and judges.[3] Leo has said of Mitch McConnell, who has broken records in seating Republican judicial nominees, that he was "the most consequential majority leader, certainly, in modern history."[17]

In January 2020, Leo announced that he would be leaving his position as vice president at the Federalist Society to start a new group, CRC Advisors.[18] CRC Advisors is a conservative public affairs consulting firm modeled off of the liberal advisory group Arabella Advisors.[19][18] CRC Advisor has lobbied against climate change mitigation policies.[20] Leo remained in his role as co-chairman of the Federalist Society's board of directors.[19]

Leo is Roman Catholic.[3] He has seven children with his wife, Sally.[3] Their daughter Margaret died in 2007 at the age of 14 from spina bifida.[21] Leo has spoken about the profound impact her life had on him.[21][22][23] Justice Thomas considered her a friend and keeps drawings from her under the glass on his desk.[22]

In 2019, The Washington Post reported that the Federalist Society had paid Leo an annual wage of more than $400,000 for a number of years.[3] In 2016, Leo received $120,000 for his work for the Catholic Association.[3]

• Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (Simon & Schuster, 2004), co-editor

• Federalist Society biography
• "A conservative activists's behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation's courts". Washington Post. 21 May 2019. Retrieved 21 May 2019.