CROLEY
Steven

• 1. Early life and education

Steven Paul Croley is an American lawyer, partner at Latham & Watkins, and the Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor (on leave since 2010). His practice areas include law reform, legal policy, regulation, oversight, and political law, with special emphasis on energy and the environment. His academic research and writing focus on administrative law, civil procedure, good government, and regulatory policy.

Croley joined Latham & Watkins in 2017, following seven years holding senior positions in the Obama Administration. He was sworn in as General Counsel of the United States Department of Energy on May 21, 2014 (having been nominated on August 1, 2013), and served in that role till January 19, 2017. Prior to joining the Department of Energy, he served in the Office of White House Counsel. From 2012–2014, he served as Deputy Assistant and Deputy Counsel to the President for legal policy, and from 2011 to 2012 as Senior Counsel to the President. He oversaw a legal team handling a wide range of domestic legal issues, including energy. From 2010 to 2011, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Justice & Regulatory Policy on the White House Domestic Policy Council. On the Domestic Policy Council, Croley had a "broad portfolio including good government and transparency issues, civil rights, food safety, and criminal justice policy."

Croley was also appointed by the President Obama to serve as a Council Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. He has been described as having "a genius for regulatory law."

Early life and education

Croley was born and raised in Mid-Michigan, where he attended public schools. He earned his A.B. summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan, where he was a James B. Angell Scholar and won the William Jennings Bryan Prize, in 1988. Croley then earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1991, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal, was a John M. Olin student fellow, and won the John M. Olin Prize and Benjamin Scharps Prize. Croley served as a law clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1991 to 1992. Croley attended graduate school at Princeton University, where he was a University Fellow and earned an M.A. in 1994 and a Ph.D. in American politics in 1998.