Asa P. French

Asa Palmer French (January 29, 1860 – September 17, 1935) was an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1906 to 1914.

French was born on January 29, 1860. His father was a Commissioner of the Court of Alabama Claims. In 1882 French graduated from Yale University, where he served on the tenth editorial board of The Yale Record and was a member of Skull and Bones. He subsequently studied law at Boston University.

In 1896 he came to prominence as court appointed junior counsel for Thomas M. Bram, who was tried (and ultimately convicted, then pardoned) for a triple axe murder committed on the high seas.

From 1901 to 1906 French was the District Attorney for the Southeastern District of Massachusetts. In 1905 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Massachusetts Attorney General. In 1906 he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to serve as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. He was re-appointed by President William Howard Taft in 1910 and remained U.S. Attorney until 1 November 1914 when he resigned to enter private practice.

In 1916 he testified before the United States Senate during the confirmation hearings of United States Supreme Court nominee Louis Brandeis. Of Brandeis, French said: "Mr. Brandeis has, in my experience, the reputation of being a man of integrity, a man of honor, a man who is conscientiously striving for what he believes to be right".

French was elected to serve as a member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917, representing the Massachusetts Fourteenth Congressional District.

In 1920 French was a counsel for the complainants in a $150,000,000 suit against William Rockefeller and other former directors of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. He split a fee of more than $800,000 with four other lawyers.

French died on November 17, 1935.