Stuart F. Delery was appointed Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division in March 2012.

Mr. Delery joined the United States Department of Justice in January 2009 as Chief of Staff and Counselor to the Deputy Attorney General, and later served as Associate Deputy Attorney General.  From August 2010 until March 2012, Delery served as Senior Counselor to the Attorney General.  In that position, he focused on civil and appellate matters, including national security litigation, as well as legal policy issues. 

Before joining the Department of Justice, Delery was a partner in the Washington D.C. office of the law firm WilmerHale, where he was a member of the Litigation Department and the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Practice Group, and a Vice Chair of the firm’s Securities Department.  His practice focused on matters involving securities and other financial frauds, internal corporate investigations, and complex litigation in trial courts and on appeal presenting novel questions of constitutional and federal law. 

Mr. Delery graduated from Yale Law School and the University of Virginia.  He clerked for Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Byron R. White of the U.S. Supreme Court, and for Chief Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

As the largest litigating division in the Department of Justice, the Civil Division represents the United States in legal challenges to Congressional statutes, Administration policies, and federal agency actions.  These include: defending the President’s health care reform legislation against constitutional challenges; litigating national security cases, such as habeas corpus petitions brought by detainees at Guantanamo Bay; and leading the Department’s civil enforcement action filed in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Civil Division also defends the President, Cabinet officers, and other federal employees in lawsuits filed against them, and it brings affirmative litigation on behalf of the United States, such as efforts to recover taxpayer dollars lost to fraud and to enforce the nation’s consumer protection laws.