17 Facts About Ed O'Callaghan

Edward Casey O'Callaghan was born on June 8,1969 and is an American attorney and former US Department of Justice official.

Ed O'Callaghan resigned to join John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, where he was one of the became the public faces of the legal defense of McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, against ethics charges related to her former brother-in-law.

Ed O'Callaghan left the department in 2019 and returned to private practice.

Ed O'Callaghan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Georgetown University and a Juris Doctor from the New York University School of Law.

From 1995 to 1996, Ed O'Callaghan served as a law clerk to Judge Kevin Duffy of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Early in his career, Ed O'Callaghan was an assistant US attorney in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

Ed O'Callaghan was co-chief of the office's terrorism and national security unit.

In 2008, Ed O'Callaghan joined became a lawyer for the presidential campaign of Republican John McCain.

Ed O'Callaghan co-led what the Anchorage Daily News called "a cadre of high-powered operatives" described by McCain's campaign as a "truth squad" to field questions about and defend attacks against his running mate, vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska.

Ed O'Callaghan was sent to Alaska to handle "legal issues that are affecting the political dynamic of the campaign," according to Taylor Griffin, a former Treasury Department official in the Bush administration.

Ed O'Callaghan moved into private practice in March 2009, joining the law firm Nixon Peabody as part of its Government Investigations and White Collar Defense Practice Group.

Ed O'Callaghan worked on several high-profile cases; he represented Achilles Macris, who was head of the London branch of JPMorgan Chase's chief investment office, where the trader nicknamed the "London Whale" operated.

Ed O'Callaghan served on the defense of Jeffrey Webb, the former President of CONCACAF and member of the FIFA Council, in the criminal RICO indictment pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

In 2017, Ed O'Callaghan became the principal deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's National Security Division.

Berman said that, following his office's investigation, USAO-SDNY concluded that Gregory B Craig, a powerful Democratic lawyer whom the office had investigated, had committed no crime, and declined to charge him, but that in September 2018, O'Callaghan contacted Berman's office and asked him to charge Craig before the 2018 midterm elections, saying that "It's time for you guys to even things out" after the indictments of Cohen and Chris Collins, a Republican congressman and Trump ally.

In 2019, Ed O'Callaghan co-authored a memorandum, issued by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, that recommended that Trump should not be indicted for obstruction of justice.

Ed O'Callaghan left office in December 2019 and rejoined WilmerHale in April 2020.