Some might feel a little paranoid about the latest development at Facebook.
The popular social-networking website that boasts 100-million-plus users has just hired Ted Ullyot, a former Bush administration lawyer, as its top in-house counsel.
Ullyot was chief of staff to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from 2003 to 2005, as well as a deputy assistant to the president, who helped coordinate the White House response to the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
More recently, he was a partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis, where he had begun his legal career after clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Ted’s arrival really demonstrates we’re a little more grown-up,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications, told the Los Angeles Times.
“He has an extraordinary combination of private legal practice and public sector experience. So many of the legal issues we face touch on both of those arenas. He is equally comfortable helping us expand internationally as he is in helping us navigate complicated legal issues we may face in Washington.”
As for Ullyot’s close connections to the Republican party, Schrage said: “We think that’s a good thing.”
Ullyot, 41, apparently also had good chemistry with Facebook’s 24-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Schrage noted that both attended Harvard.
A San Francisco native, Ullyot began his legal career clerking for Scalia and Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, who is now senior vice president and general counsel for Boeing.
As a new-minted attorney, he was recruited to work for Kirkland & Ellis by then-partner Kenneth Starr, who would later serve as special prosecutor examining the Clinton’s Whitewater real-estate dealings.
Ullyot served as general counsel for AOL Time Warner Europe for one year, working with the legal and policy staff in Europe and European Commission officials. Schrage points to that experience as a big asset as Facebook expands internationally.
After leaving the government in 2005, he became the top lawyer at ESL Investments, a Connecticut investment firm run by billionaire investor Edward S. “Eddie” Lampert, before rejoining Kirkland as a partner in May.
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