A Closer Look At George Conway, Wachtell Lipton Partner And Husband Of Kellyanne Conway

Let's get to know the high-powered Biglaw partner who's married to one of the most famous women in American politics.

Kellyanne Conway, George Conway, and their twins (via Kellyanne Conway's Twitter feed)

Kellyanne Conway, George Conway, and their twins (via Kellyanne Conway’s Twitter feed)

Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager turned senior adviser to President Donald Trump, is now one of the most famous lawyers in America. A graduate of the George Washington University Law School and member of the D.C. bar, Conway is a regular subject of Saturday Night Live skits. How many lawyers can make that claim to fame?

Interestingly enough, Kellyanne Conway hasn’t always been Kellyanne Conway. The prominent pollster was known as Kellyanne Fitzpatrick — until she married another high-profile lawyer, longtime Wachtell Lipton partner George Conway.

George Conway is no stranger to these pages. The Yale Law grad was a finalist for the post of solicitor general — a plum post that ultimately went to his fellow Filipino American, Noel Francisco — and Conway should be nominated to lead the Justice Department’s civil division any day now.

But who is George Conway really? I shared some personal recollections about him based on our working together at Wachtell Lipton, but that was quite some time ago. Fortunately, Ben Terris of the Washington Post just produced a detailed profile of this influential attorney, George Conway Is the Man at the Center of Everything.

Terris goes back to the very beginning. George Conway’s mother was an organic chemist from the Philippines, and his father worked for defense contractor Raytheon. Conway grew up outside of Boston and graduated from Marlborough High School, where there’s no photo of him in the yearbook; his name appears near the end, under the “Camera Shy” section. (And it looks like he’s still camera shy; note the lack of a photo in his Wachtell Lipton bio.)

After graduating from Harvard College, at age 20, and from Yale Law School, where he was active in the Federalist Society, Conway clerked for Judge Ralph Winter of the Second Circuit and then joined Wachtell Lipton. By his mid-thirties, he was a partner at the uber-profitable and prestigious firm, taking home a seven-figure paycheck.

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But representing major corporations in high-stakes litigation wasn’t enough for Conway. As I told Terris for the article, “George is somebody who likes to be in the mix, where the action is.”

And back in the 1990s, the action surrounded President Bill Clinton. Terris recounts Conway’s behind-the-scenes role in assisting lawyers for Paula Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who famously sued President Clinton for sexual harassment — and set into motion the chain of events that would culminate in Clinton’s impeachment. But talking to Terris, Conway discounts or minimizes these events and his role in them:

“If you told me in 1994 that this would lead to the impeachment of the president, I would have said you are a certifiable lunatic,” he said. “It was just a civil case. It was popgun. It was nothing, and nobody took it seriously.”

As for claims that Conway shared damaging information about President Clinton with Matt Drudge:

George says now he has no recollection of sending emails to Drudge and denies he was “out to get” the president.

“The notion that it was some sort of long-term conspiracy to destroy Bill Clinton is ludicrous,” he said. “It was mystifying to me that they never settled.”

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This is good practice for Conway’s confirmation hearings, where his involvement in the controversial litigation might be the only major sticking point. As a longtime litigator with an impressive track record, including a win before the U.S. Supreme Court in an important securities case, Conway’s clearly qualified for the job.

The WaPo profile also contains some fun tidbits. For example, how did George and Kellyanne Conway meet? They were introduced by another celebrity of the conservative world:

[I]t took time for George — pudgy, soft-spoken and borderline shy — to find love. Not that he didn’t have a type. He became friends with Laura Ingraham, often inviting her to the ski slopes or the beach. And while nothing ever happened between him and [his good friend Ann] Coulter, she was responsible for him meeting the other blond Republican It Girl, who would become his wife.

He was familiar with Kellyanne from her television punditry spots. But inspiration struck one day in the late 1990s when he spotted her on the cover of a society magazine. He called Coulter and asked for an introduction.

He courted her with trips to his Hamptons beach rental and tickets to baseball playoffs. And at some point, Kellyanne remembers telling a friend: “I find that his near-constant presence doesn’t annoy me.”

That might not sound very romantic, but I think it’s a good sign that someone is marriage material. (I’ve said something similar to my husband: “Many people start to annoy me if I hang out with them long enough, but not you.”)

So that’s how George and Kellyanne met. What about Kellyanne and the Donald?

[George and Kellyanne Conway moved into] an apartment in Manhattan’s Trump World Tower. There, [George] caught the future president’s attention by arguing to the condo board against stripping Trump’s name from the exterior. The speech earned him an appreciative call from the mogul and an offer to join the board. He declined, but Kellyanne said she’d do it.

“My laziness led her to meet Donald Trump,” he said in a recent interview.

And perhaps contributed to Trump’s surprising election victory? Trump’s campaign was viewed by many as floundering before Kellyanne Conway took over. George took great pride in his wife’s role in Trump’s election:

George spent election night nervously watching returns with his wife’s team at the Midtown Manhattan Hilton. When the networks called it for Trump, he couldn’t hold back his pride. Tears streamed down his face, and he shouted to anyone who would listen: “She did it! She did it! She made history.”

Said Kellyanne: “He’s always been the more emotional one.”

And also, since Kellyanne got sucked into Trumpworld, George is the spouse with primary responsibility for their four children. It’s impressive to see a high-powered (male) Biglaw partner taking the lead in raising the kids.

Part of this has to do with the New York/D.C. issue. But with the school year winding down and with George set to take a Washington job — subject to Senate approval, of course — the family can be together again in one city. And in an $8 million house that the Conways expect to close on this month. (For a deeper dive into their finances, see here.)

Why should Kellyanne Conway get to have all the fun? Good luck to George Conway in the confirmation process. He’s already made his millions, so now he can make his mark in a different way. Standing up in court to represent the people of the United States is a nice follow-up to representing its major corporations.

(You can read Ben Terris’s Washington Post piece, which contains additional interesting info, here.)

George Conway is the man at the center of everything [Washington Post]

Earlier:


DBL square headshotDavid Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@abovethelaw.com.</st