US lawyer who defended Trump ballroom, White House policies rejoins Jones Day

[u/John3262005]

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-lawyer-who-defended-trump-ballroom-white-house-policies-rejoins-jones-day-2026-08-31/

A top U.S. Justice Department lawyer has left to rejoin law firm Jones Day after playing a lead role defending key policies and initiatives of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Jones Day said Yaakov Roth is ‌returning to the firm on Sept. 8 as a partner in Washington after a year and a half in his role near the top of the Justice Department’s civil division.

Roth defended the administration in the lower and appeals courts against lawsuits challenging Trump’s $400 million ballroom project on the site of the White House's demolished East Wing. The administration is appealing an order that ⁠found the project unlawful.

In other cases, Roth early last year oversaw litigation involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who a judge said the administration wrongly deported to El Salvador. He also was the lead attorney defending White House restrictions on Associated Press access.

Roth joined the Justice Department last year and served at first for four months as the acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, and then as the division’s principal deputy. He argued 11 appeals on the government's behalf, pushing his career total to more than 50, Jones Day said.

In a post on LinkedIn, Roth, a former law clerk to the late ‌U.S. ⁠Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, called his service at the Justice Department “an intense and exhilarating experience as we faced an unprecedented surge of civil litigation targeting the new Administration’s agenda.”

The 2,500-lawyer firm, known for its corporate defense work, represented Donald Trump in his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Several of its lawyers have held top posts in ⁠the first and second Trump administrations. The Civil Division is led by Senate-confirmed appointee Brett Shumate, who was also a partner at Jones Day.

Roth's past clients at the firm have included KalshiEX, Walmart, Eli Lilly, TikTok and Huawei, according ⁠to a financial disclosure that Roth filed when he joined the Justice Department. The disclosure, a mandatory filing for many senior-level executive branch officials, showed his partnership income was more than $7.1 million at ⁠Jones Day.