Thurgood Marshall, Jr.

Thurgood Marshall, Jr. (born August 12, 1956) is an American lawyer and son of the late Supreme Court of the United States Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Thurgood Marshall Jr. worked in the Clinton White House and is currently a partner at the international law firm Bingham McCutchen, LLP and a principal at its global strategic consulting subsidiary, Bingham Consulting. He is also chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation. According to documents filed with the SEC, he is a director serving on the board of Corrections Corporation of America, the largest commercial vendor of federal detainment and prisoner transport in the United States. Since 2012, Marshall is also an independent director serving on the board of Genesco Inc., an international footwear and apparel retailer based in Nashville, TN.

Private practice

Bingham McCutchen gained Marshall as a partner when it acquired Swidler Berlin, where he had been a partner since 2003. In addition to counseling clients, Marshall provided internal advice to Swidler Berlin on ethics compliance and corporate governance. He became a managing director of Swidler Berlin's Harbour Group in 2005. [1]. He is now part of Bingham McCutchen’s Government Affairs practice, counseling clients on relations with Congress, the Executive Branch and independent regulatory agencies. He has provided legislative and regulatory counsel on corporate mergers, professional and amateur sports, commercial aviation, utilities and banking regulation, and legal process reforms.

Marshall has been named one of Washington's top campaign and election lawyers by Washingtonian Magazine, a leading lawyer in government relations law by The Best Lawyers in America, and included on the Best Lawyers List of the Washington Post Magazine. Newsweek named him one of the 100 people to watch in the new century.

Government service

Marshall came to Swidler Berlin from the Clinton Administration, where he had served since 1997 as Assistant to the President and White House Cabinet Secretary. In that role, he managed White House relations with the executive departments; his responsibilities included organizing cabinet meetings and briefings, compiling a daily update of cabinet department activities, and coordinating responses to natural and transportation disasters. As vice chair of the White House Olympic Task Force, he coordinated federal government’s preparations for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. He was also a member of the Interagency Task Force on U.S. Coast Guard Roles and Missions. [1]

President Clinton named Marshall to the Presidential Delegation to the Inauguration of South African President Nelson Mandela in 1994. Marshall also served as a member of the Presidential Election Observer Delegation to Bosnia in 1998. That delegation was led by Ambassador Robert Gelbard. Marshall was a member of the United States Delegation to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney Australia.

He had previously served as Director of Legislative Affairs and Deputy Counsel to Vice President Al Gore, for whom he had previously worked in the United States Senate and as Deputy Campaign Manager of the Gore For President Campaign in 1988 and as traveling policy advisor on the Clinton-Gore Presidential Campaign.

Early in his career, Marshall clerked for United States District Judge Barrington D. Parker and then served as a Counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy with the Senate's Judiciary Committee; Counsel to Senator Ernest F. Hollings and Senator Albert Gore Jr. with the Senate's Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee; and Counsel to Senator Albert Gore Jr. with the Senate's Governmental Affairs Committee.

Personal life and civic involvement

Marshall is currently a senior advisor to AllAmerica Political action committee, a political organization set up by Senator Evan Bayh, who briefly sought the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [1] Marshall also the Director of Congressional Relations for the Wesley Clark for President Campaign in 2004. He has been involved with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, serving on the board of the Foundation for eight years and promoting environmental science and other science education. He also volunteers at a local food bank and other community service outlets in the Washington, D.C. area.

Marshall is member of the following boards: United States Postal Service Board of Governors [2], Ford Foundation [3], Corrections Corporation of America [4], Genesco [5], The Third Way [6], National Women's Law Center, the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service [7], and the Supreme Court Historical Society [8]. He has been a member of the Ethics Advisory Committee of the United States Olympic Committee [9] since its inception in 2001 and chairs the Advisory Commission of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Election Law [10].

He has participated on election and election law observer missions to Bosnia, Chile, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. Marshall is also a veteran of U.S. presidential campaigns including Gore '88 and Clinton '92 and Clark '04.

Marshall was born in New York City and earned a Juris Doctor at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1981 and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia in 1978. He graduated from The Phillips Exeter Academy and attended school at Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C. and the Dalton School in New York City.

Of his father's legacy, Marshall has said "One, he was part of a group of people... who all came together at the right time to steer the country on the right course with regard to equality, especially in education," and "I also like to think of his legacy as one of encouraging lawyers of every color to contribute their skills to society." Marshall's experiences growing up at the Supreme Court were recounted in USA Today in a story about Chief Justice Roberts. (June 26, 2006)

He is the son of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, and a Filipino American mother, Cecilia Suyat Marshall. [13] He is also the brother of John W. Marshall, a former Virginia Secretary of Public Safety and former U.S. Marshals Service Director.

Marshall and his wife Teddi Levy Marshall (Vice President and Founder of Rolling Greens Inc.)[11] were married on April 25, 2008. They were married at the Supreme Court of the United States and Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer performed the ceremony. The couple lives in the Washington, D.C. area and they have two sons, Thurgood William and Edward Patrick Marshall.