talley esq

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Brett Joseph Talley (born 1981)^[1] is an American lawyer and author who served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice. In September 2017, he was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill a vacancy on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.^[2] His nomination drew controversy due to his lack of judicial experience, partisan personal blogging, and failure to disclose that he was married to Ann Donaldson, the chief of staff to White House counsel Don McGahn. He became the third judicial nominee since 1989 to receive a unanimous rating of "not qualified" from the American Bar Association.^[3] On December 13, 2017, Talley withdrew his name from consideration for the appointment.^[4]

Early life and education

Talley earned his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and history from the University of Alabama, and his Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as an articles editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.^[5]

Career

Earlier in his career, he worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, served as law clerk to Judge Joel F. Dubina of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, and served as a law clerk to Judge L. Scott Coogler of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Before joining the Department of Justice, he served for two years as Deputy Solicitor General under then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, who endorsed his judicial nomination.^[6][7][8] Prior to joining the Alabama Attorney General's Office, Talley served as a speechwriter for U.S. Senator Rob Portman and as a senior writer for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.^[9]

He is also the co-host of The Prosecutors true crime podcast, a highly popular, top-100 podcast.^[10]

Failed nomination to district court

On September 7, 2017, President Donald J. Trump nominated Talley to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, to the seat vacated by Judge Mark Fuller, who resigned on August 1, 2015.^[11] On October 17, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[12] The ABA Standing Committee sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee dated November 7, 2017, stating that it believed Talley "did not have the requisite trial experience or its equivalent", but that it "had no questions about his integrity or temperament" and that with time and experience "Mr. Talley has great potential to serve as a federal judge."^[13] The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights sent a letter dated November 8, 2017 to the Judiciary Committee stating that Talley "has demonstrated ideologically extreme views that call into question his temperament and ability to approach cases with the fairness and open-mindedness necessary to serve as a federal judge,"^[14] quoting tweets and blog posts and asking that Chairman Chuck Grassley "not break the Senate tradition of waiting to schedule nomination hearings until their ABA ratings have been submitted, for good reason – so that the committee can have all the relevant information before it when questioning nominees for lifetime appointments to the judiciary."^[15]

On November 9, 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed Talley for the lifetime appointment in an 11–9 party-line vote;^[7] Chairman Grassley, rejecting the ABA's "not qualified" opinion on Talley and fellow nominee Holly Teeter, wrote, "I’ll be voting for both these nominees today.... I don’t see extensive trial experience as the sole factor in deciding whether a nominee is qualified."^[16] On December 12, Grassley said that he had advised the Trump White House to "reconsider" the nominations of Talley and Jeff Mateer: "I would advise the White House not to proceed."^[17] A spokesperson for Grassley said that the Senator "has been concerned about statements made by nominees Mateer and Talley, and he’s conveyed those concerns to the White House.

Talley was found to have made comments on an online message board, in which he showed support for Nathan Bedford Forrest and “The early KKK”. In these posts, Talley falsely claimed that during reconstruction, the KKK did not engage in violence or racism.^[18] Revelations of Talley’s statements surfaced only after he was reported out of the Judiciary Committee."^[19] BuzzFeed News reported that Talley had offered to withdraw the previous week and that Alabama Senator Richard Shelby had asked Talley for his letter of withdrawal.^[17] On December 13 the White House confirmed that Talley and Mateer's nominations would not proceed.^[19][20]

The nomination of Talley for a federal district court judgeship was noteworthy because Talley had never tried a case at the time of his nomination.^[7] Talley was unanimously rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association's (ABA) Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.^[7][21] At the time the rating was issued, the ABA had only on two other occasions since 1989 unanimously rated a judicial nominee as "not qualified".^[3]

Talley's nomination was also unusual because of his lack of experience (at the time of the nomination, he had practiced law for three years) and because he "displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial nominee" on his blog, in 2016 denouncing Hillary Clinton as "Hillary Rotten Clinton" and in 2013, after the Obama administration announced plans and proposals to address gun violence following the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, expressing support for the National Rifle Association.^[7][22][23] In February 2013 on his blog, Talley said that he "agree[d] completely with" a reader's "thoughtful response" which stated, "We will have to resort to arms when our other rights — of speech, press, assembly, representative government — fail to yield the desired results."^[7]

While awaiting Senate confirmation, Talley failed to disclose that he was married to Ann Donaldson, the chief of staff to White House counsel Don McGahn. As part of his Senate confirmation, Talley was asked to identify family members and others who are "likely to present potential conflicts of interest," but he did not identify his wife. Talley also did not mention his wife when describing his contact with lawyers for the White House. She was a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.^[3] Vanzetta Penn McPherson, a former magistrate judge for the Middle District, wrote an opinion editorial calling Talley unqualified for the position.^[24]

On December 13, 2017, a White House official said that Talley had withdrawn his name from consideration.^[4] On January 3, 2018, his nomination was returned to the President under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.^[25] On January 5, 2018, the White House renominated 21 of 26 federal judicial nominees who had been returned by the U.S. Senate. Talley was not among the 21 individuals who were renominated.^[26]

Writings

Talley has published three horror novels/novellas and two "true ghost stories"; in 2011, Talley's Lovecraftian horror novel That Which Should Not Be was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award.^[27] Talley was part of The Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group, which investigated claims of paranormal phenomenon such as ghosts. With TPRG co-founder David Higdon, he wrote the book Haunted Tuscaloosa about the group's investigations.^[28]

Bibliography

Series Limbus, Inc.

Limbus, Inc. (2013) (with Benjamin Kane Ethridge, Jonathan Maberry, Joseph Nassise and Anne C Petty)
Limbus, Inc. - Book II (2014)
Limbus, Inc. - Book III (2016)

Novels

That Which Should Not Be (2011)
The Void (2012)
He Who Walks in Shadow (2015)

Collections

The Fiddle Is the Devil's Instrument (2017)

Non fiction

Haunted Tuscaloosa (2012)

Personal life

On August 15, 2015, Talley married Ann Michelle Donaldson, also a Harvard Law School graduate, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.^[29][30]

Talley has been nominated for a seat on the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, and is already facing criticism this week for a disclosure-related issue: The New York Times reported on Monday that Talley failed to include in his Senate questionnaire that he is married to a lawyer in the White House counsel's office, Ann Donaldson. The questionnaire asks nominees to disclose family members who are “likely to present potential conflicts of interest."

TideFans.com / Via tidefans.com

The questionnaire also asks nominees to list "published material you have written or edited, including material published only on the Internet." Talley listed posts he wrote for the blog Government in Exile and noted that he had also blogged on his personal website about horror writing. His posts on Government in Exile included pieces about the US political response to mass shootings — he called gun control efforts at the time "wrongheaded" — and pledging support to the National Rifle Association. There are no entries about posts on TideFans.com.

In an email to BuzzFeed News, White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley disputed that posts on a message board had to be disclosed to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"The Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire asks for published writings and public statements — not everything that's ever been typed on a keyboard. Alabama football fans' internet message board conversations are not deemed 'published writings', 'public statements', or 'published material;' nor are they deemed the equivalent of 'books', 'articles', or 'reports,'" Gidley wrote.

Talley is a senior official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on Talley's behalf. A White House spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Many of BamainBoston's posts are about sports. But some address politics and other nonsports subjects. On Dec. 17, 2012, a few days after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, BamainBoston posted, "My solution would be to stop being a society of pansies and man up."

TideFans.com / Via tidefans.com

BamainBoston continued: "We shouldn't depend on the government to protect us. We should be ready to protect ourselves. Everyone should know that part of their social responsibility is to learn how to use a firearm effectively and carry one with them at all times. I know some of you will freak out at that suggestion, but the only law I can imagine that would have stopped what happened in Connecticut is if every one of the teachers was armed with a gun and trained in how to use it."

BamainBoston appears to have edited at least two posts this year. On Jan. 24, 2012, BamainBoston published a post about a book the user had written being nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. That year, Talley was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for one of his novels. The Jan. 24, 2012, post, and another one published by BamainBoston in the same thread two days later, were edited on June 28, 2017, by BamainBoston, according to the website — the same dayTalley indicated in his Senate questionnaire that he met with Alabama Sens. Richard Shelby and Luther Strange about his potential nomination to the federal court.

TideFans.com / Via tidefans.com

According to TideFans.com, user BamainBoston joined the site in March 2005, and has published 16,381 posts. The user's most recent activity was on Monday at 2:58 p.m. The user indicated on a profile page that they were born in 1981, graduated from the University of Alabama, and were located in Boston. Talley was born in 1981, earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama, and got his law degree from Harvard Law School in Boston. In 2012, Talley worked in Beverly, Massachusetts, about an hour's drive from Boston, for Mitt Romney's campaign.

Although the page says that BamainBoston's location is Boston, it also lists the zip code 36117, which is in Montgomery, Alabama. From 2015 until he joined the Justice Department in January, Talley worked in Montgomery in the Alabama attorney general's office as the deputy solicitor general.

In 2011, BamainBoston posted in a thread about immigration. Responding to another poster who wrote, "can we all agree that wasserman is a complete moron, even if you agree with the overall agenda she is peddling?" — an apparent reference to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee — BamainBoston wrote, "Agreed. It is hard to reform something if we can't even agree on what it is."

TideFans.com / Via tidefans.com

Later in the thread, BamainBoston wrote on the subject of how the US government should handle undocumented immigrants: "As for those people who are already here, yes, they violated the law. Great. That tells us nothing. The debate is how to punish that violation of the law. Go ahead. Punish them. Fine them. Whatever. Then give them a path to citizenship. The last thing we want here is a permanent underclass of people. And the thought of the police breaking down the doors of otherwise law abiding citizens and dragging them out to be deported is horrible and un-American. The crime most of these people committed is wanting a better life."

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines on Nov. 9 to approve Talley's nomination and send him to the full Senate for consideration. Democrats have criticized Talley for his professional record, saying he lacks experience and pointing to the rare "not qualified" rating that he received from the American Bar Association. Talley indicated in his questionnaire that although he had worked at a private law firm and in the Alabama attorney general's office in the years since he earned his law degree in 2007, he had never tried a case in court. He did clerk for a federal district judge as well as a federal appeals court judge.

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...federal courts that struck down his “Muslim travel ban” on three separate occasions, that blocked his ban on trans people in the military and that did the same to his attempt to defund so-called sanctuary cities.

But the makeup of America’s judges is quietly becoming the site of one of Trump’s most unequivocal successes: nominating and installing judges who reflect his own worldview at a speed and volume unseen in recent memory. Trump could conceivably have handpicked more than 30% of the nation’s federal judges before the end of his first term, his advisers have suggested, and independent observers agree.

“The president himself has said that he expects this to be one of his major legacies. He is going to reshape the bench for generations to come,” said Douglas Keith, counsel with the fair courts arm of the Brennan Center for Justice.

“I do think this deserves more attention given the consequence, the significance of what will eventually be a wholesale change among the federal judiciary,” he continued.

Much has been made of Trump’s failure to get legislation through Congress and received wisdom suggests that he has little to show for his first 10 months in power. However, the lasting impact that court picks have on the lives of Americans means that Trump’s choices – and the sheer numbers involved – will help reshape America for the next half-century.

Until recently little attention has been paid to Trump’s judicial appointments. But Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and a member of the Senate judiciary committee, identified the importance of these appointments early on. In June he said: “This will be the single most important legacy of the Trump administration. They will quickly be able to put judges on circuit courts all over the country, district courts all over the country, that will, given their youth and conservatism, have a significant impact on the shape and trajectory of American law for decades.

The lack of diversity in Trump’s picks was highlighted by the Associated Press. They ran the numbers on the 58 people nominated by the Trump administration to lifetime positions on appeal courts, district courts, and the supreme court. Of those, 53 are white, three are Asian American, one is Hispanic and one is African American.

Forty seven are men and 11 are women.

...

erhaps the most brazen of Trump’s early picks is Brett Talley, an Alabama attorney just three years out of law school who has yet to try a case. The American Bar Association gave Talley a unanimous rating of “unqualified” for the post but that did not stop him from breezing through a confirmation hearing in the Senate judiciary committee. Neither did the fact that Talley appears to have blogged favorably about the KKK and statutory rape on message boards and failed to disclose in his questionnaire that his wife is a staffer in the White House.

Trump is “appointing hacks and cronies which I think is either intentionally or just has the effect of signaling contempt for legal process”, Azmy said.

Some of the other stand-out Trump picks include Jeff Mateer, a Texas attorney who has openly admitted that he discriminates against LGBT people, and Thomas Farr, who has spearheaded multiple legal efforts to suppress the black vote in his home state of North Carolina.

“It is no exaggeration to say that had the White House deliberately sought to identify an attorney in North Carolina with a more hostile record on African-American voting rights and workers’ rights than Thomas Farr, it could hardly have done so,” wrote the Congressional Black Caucus in a letter to Trump urging him to withdraw the nomination.

One thing Mateer, Talley and Farr all have in common, like a startling 74% of Trump’s nominees, is that they are all white men. According to the Associated Press, if Trump continues on this trend through his first term, he will be the first Republican since Herbert Hoover to name fewer women and minorities to the court than his GOP predecessor.

“This is a striking move in the direction away from diversity that is not just attributable to them wanting to appoint more conservative judges,” who will tend to be whiter and more male than the general population, said Douglas Keith.

And the impact that can have for generations is hard to overstate. “Federal courts shape laws, they shape the constitution, they affect people’s rights, and at core they impact how our democracy functions,” Keith said. “Conservatives have understood the importance of these courts, they’ve been organizing around them for decades, and have been able to move their supporters in ways that the left hasn’t.”

That has involved, first and foremost, building a pipeline of potential conservative candidates, Keith said. Conservative groups like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation have become de facto clearing houses for Republican presidents and they absolutely have Trump’s ear.

According to the Hill, of the 13 judicial nominees confirmed since President Trump took office, 10 are either current or formerFederalist Society members or regular speakers at its events.

The organization describes itself as “a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order”, and operates on the premise that “law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology”. Clarence Thomas, Jeff Sessions and the late Antonin Scalia are among the society’s more well-known alumni.

The non-partisan American Bar Association, which for decades had offered the White House its opinion on the qualifications of nominees was removed from the process by Trump in favor of Federalist Society influence. So far they have rated four of Trump’s nominees unqualified, four more than they ever did under the previous administration.

Thus far the Republican-controlled Senate judiciary committee has been little more than a rubber stamp for Trump’s nominees, having advanced all of his picks through hearings so far. This drew scorn from Democratic committee member Sheldon Whitehouse who earlier this month called the hearings “a joke” and complained that candidates had been studiously coached on “how to withstand all of five minutes of questioning by senators”.

Trump also inherited a massive cache of over 100 judicial openings when he came into office, more than twice that of his predecessor Obama in 2009. That’s because, even as Trump has routinely lambasted Democrats as the party of obstruction, it was Republicans for most of Barack Obama’s term who slowed the confirmation of judicial nominees to a slow crawl. Since his inauguration the number of openings has grown to more than 160 – that’s about half the 323 regional federal judges Obama nominated and had confirmed during his full eight years in office, and Trump has only been in office for 10 months.

It is true that, even as Republicans have picked up the pace of confirmations, Trump cannot fill all those 160 openings overnight. But after sweeping Democratic election wins in races earlier this month, anxious conservatives are going to start pushing Trump to get as many nominees as possible through before the 2018 midterms.

“Obviously, who gets nominated and the pace of confirmations … changes dramatically if the Senate were to flip back to the Democrats,” said John Malcolm, a former justice department lawyer and now an analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Republicans “should be paying particular attention to pushing through as many nominees as they can”.

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[### GOP Senate hopeful's chief of staff caught on group chat ...

Slate Magazine

https://slate.com › news-and-politics › 2026/05 › senate...](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/05/senate-georgia-elections-mike-collins-nick-fuentes.html)

1 day ago — Kip Talley, Collins' current chief of staff, detailed his efforts in a group chat that included prominent white nationalists, among them Nick ...Read more

[### GOP frontrunner's top aide vowed to have notorious ...

Raw Story

https://www.rawstory.com › amp › gop-holocaust-denie...](https://www.rawstory.com/amp/gop-holocaust-denier-2676968135)

1 day ago — Kip Talley, who works for Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) and was deputy chief of staff at the time, tried to leverage his position to free ...Read more

[### Judge candidate who once defended early Klan pulls ...

Southern Poverty Law Center

https://www.splcenter.org › Hatewatch](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/judge-candidate-who-once-defended-early-klan-pulls-nomination/)

Dec 13, 2017 — Talley, a 36-year-old attorney who has never argued a motion in court or tried a case, saw his name withdrawn from consideration Wednesday for a ...Read more

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[### Brett Talley

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Brett_Talley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Talley)

Brett Joseph Talley (born 1981) is an American lawyer and author who served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice.Read more

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[### Brett Talley

Ballotpedia

https://ballotpedia.org › Brett_Talley](https://ballotpedia.org/Brett_Talley)

Brett Joseph Talley is a deputy assistant attorney general in the US Department of Justice. On September 7, 2017, Talley was nominated to a seat on the United ...Read more

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[### Two Trump judge nominees out after criticism

Politico

https://www.politico.com › story › 2017/12/13 › brett-t...](https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/13/brett-talley-trump-nominee-withdraws-295322)

Dec 13, 2017 — The president will not pursue the nominations of Brett Talley to a district court slot in Alabama and Jeff Mateer to a district court post in Texas.Read more

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[### Brett Talley

Reproductive Freedom for All

https://reproductivefreedomforall.org › 2017/12](https://reproductivefreedomforall.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Brett-Talley_NARAL.pdf)

PDF

President Trump nominated Brett Talley to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Middle. District of Alabama on September 7, 2017. Talley is anti-choice.Read more

4 pages

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Images

Brett Talley - Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Is He Dishonest or an Imbecile? Take Your Pick to Explain ...

Yahoo Finance

INTERVIEW: Brett Talley from The Prosecutors Podcast ...

Buzzsprout

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[### President Trump Has Nominated a Bigot to Be a Federal ...

American Civil Liberties Union

https://www.aclu.org › news › racial-justice › president-tr...](https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/president-trump-has-nominated-bigot-be-federal-judge)

Trump nominated Brett Talley, a lawyer with a long record of bald-faced bigotry, to serve as a federal judge in Alabama.Read more

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[### Brett Talley

Alliance for Justice

https://afj.org › nominee › brett-talley](https://afj.org/nominee/brett-talley/)

President Trump nominated Brett Talley on September 7, 2017 to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.Read more

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talley esq

Early life and education

Career

Failed nomination to district court

Writings

Bibliography

Personal life

See also

Oppose the Confirmation of Brett Talley to the U.S. District Court for the ...

Donald Trump Is Doing One Thing Well: Appointing Lifetime Judges ...

Youthful Political Commentator Nominated to the Federal Bench ...

Judicial Nominee May Have Lied To Senate About Role In Racist ...

Meet the powerful group behind Trump's judicial nominations | TheHill

Trump's Judicial Picks Are Literally Right-Wing Bloggers

These Trump DOJ Appointees Could Be Instrumental in Shaping ...

Trump Nominee for Federal Judgeship Has Never Tried a Case - The ...

Trump Judicial Pick Did Not Disclose He Is Married to a White House ...

[PDF]Nomination of Brett Talley to the U.S. District Court for the Middle ...