J. Michael Luttig Biography

J. Michael Luttig was a U.S. federal judge once considered a prime candidate to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the United States Supreme Court. Luttig graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1976 and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1981. He worked briefly as an assistant counsel in the administration of Ronald Reagan, and later clerked for Chief Justice Warren Burger and for Antonin Scalia (before Scalia sat on the Supreme Court). Luttig became a judge on the Fourth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1991, appointed by President George Bush the elder. By the time George W. Bush was in the White House, Luttig was known as an opponent of so-called judicial activism and a rising star in conservative politics. Like Samuel Alito and John G. Roberts, Jr., he became newsworthy in 2005 with the announcent that Justice O’Connor was retiring. To the surprise of many, Luttig quit the bench in 2006 and went to work as general counsel and executive vice president for the Boeing Company.