Eliza Lehner, who clerked for two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, has been named chief counsel to Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport as the state’s top law enforcement official continues to assemble her leadership team in Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s new administration.
Lehner will replace Sundeep Iyer, who was tapped by Davenport to serve as Executive Assistant Attorney General. The current Executive Assistant Attorney General, Angela Cai, will be departing the office this month.
Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum, who led the state’s litigation against President Donald Trump’s administration under Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin, will remain in his post.
Davenport has also named people to serve as Deputy First Assistant Attorney General: Martha Nye, who ran the U.S. Attorney’s Trenton office; and Nicholas Kormann, a former public defender who served as Director of Investigations of Fatal Police Encounters in the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability. Nye and Kormann will serve under First Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Calle.
Iyer, who recently argued on behalf of the state before the U.S. Supreme Court, had been named Chief Counsel and director of the Division on Civil Rights by Platkin. He was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer, and to Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.
James Haggerty will serve as Davenport’s Chief of Staff. He served as Deputy Executive Director of the Office of Policing Strategy & Innovation and as Chief of Staff to the Officer in Charge of the Paterson Police Department.
Lehner will leave a major New York City law firm, Orrick, to work for the New Jersey Attorney General’s office. She clerked for Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan after clerkships with U.S. District Court Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York, and Judge Paul Watford of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Lehner was a temporary special counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as a Supreme Court Justice. At Orrick, Lehner is part of the firm’s Supreme Court and Appellate litigation practice.
Nye has spent more than seven years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and five years as an Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor. A Rutgers Law School graduate, Nye was a law clerk to Judge Peter E. Warshaw, Jr., the judge who dismissed the racketeering indictment against Democratic powerhouse George E. Norcross III.
Kormann clerked for Superior Court Judge Ronald Wigler and was an associate at Day Pitney before becoming First Assistant Public Defender for Union County. He is a Rutgers Law School graduate.