FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has filled two top legal posts at the commission, promoting Matthew Berry to general counsel and Ajit Pai to deputy general counsel.
Berry, formerly deputy general counsel, replaced Sam Feder as general counsel. The FCC announcement did not mention Feder’s next step.
Before joining the Commission, Berry was counselor to the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he earned the Department’s John Marshall Award for providing legal advice related to counter-terrorism policy. Prior to that, he served as attorney-adviser in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
He was also a visiting professor at William and Mary School of Law, and he has served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Laurence Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Mr. Berry graduated from Dartmouth College and received his J.D. from Yale Law School.
Pai most recently served as FCC associate general counsel. Before that, he was chief counsel to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and was senior counsel at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice. He was also associate general counsel at Verizon Communications.
Prior to that, Pai clerked for Judge Martin L.C. Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Pai graduated from Harvard College and from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review.
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