Attorney Stuart Delery, currently deputy counsel to the president, will become White House counsel next month, President Biden announced. Delery will be the first LGBTQ person in the position, but joins several other queer parents with leading roles in the administration.
Delery helped the Obama administration argue against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), then was named to be acting associate attorney general of the U.S., the third-ranking position at the U.S. Department of Justice and the most senior openly-LGBTQ+ official in DOJ history. Delery previously served as Senate-confirmed assistant attorney general for the Civil Division, where he led the team of lawyers at the Department of Justice (DOJ) coordinating the government’s implementation of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor, which struck down a key part of the DOMA and allowed marriages of same-sex couples to be federally recognized. He also supervised legal defense of Congressional statutes including the Affordable Care Act and agency actions.
In his current role, Delery has advised on key Administration priorities including the COVID-19 response, the American Rescue Plan, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework.
He has also worked as a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and WilmerHale. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Byron White, as well as Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat of the Eleventh Circuit. Originally from Louisiana, Stuart is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School.
Stuart and his husband live in Washington, D.C., and have two children.
Delery joins White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine as queer parents with key roles in the Biden administration. Are queer parents taking over? Hardly. But it’s still nice to see some of us there and know that neither being queer nor being a parent has hindered them from making their marks in many other ways as well.
