Royce Lamberth

Royce C. Lamberth (born 1943, San Antonio, Texas) is a judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 after thirteen years in the U.S. Attorney's office for the District, where from 1978 he was chief of the civil division. He took his law degree at the University of Texas School of Law in 1967 and served as a captain in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps until 1974. He presided over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002, was chief judge of the district court from 2008 to 2013, and took senior status on July 15, 2013.¹

The Bason Reappointment

On September 28, 1987, Bankruptcy Judge George Bason ruled from the bench that the Department of Justice had taken INSLAW's PROMIS software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit." Bason's term was then before a merit selection panel of the district court chaired by Judge Norma H. Johnson, which did not recommend his reappointment. Johnson told the special counsel Nicholas J. Bua that she had received a transcript of Bason's oral ruling from Lamberth, "who at the time was the Chief of the Civil Division for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia"; she had at first failed to recall the contact. Bua's report noted that when Lamberth brought the ruling to Johnson's attention he was still employed at the U.S. Attorney's office but "had, in fact, already been nominated to the federal bench," Reagan having named him on March 19, 1987, "and was sworn in shortly thereafter, on November 16, 1987." The Senate had confirmed him on November 13. Bua concluded that no Justice Department official had improperly influenced the selection panel, that the contact was the only evidence found of any department contact with the reappointment process, and that the episode did not call Johnson's credibility into doubt.¹²

Later Career

Lamberth's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court service ran from 1995 to 2002, the last years as presiding judge. As chief judge from 2008 he sat on the Judicial Conference of the United States. After taking senior status he also sat by designation in the Western District of Texas at San Antonio.¹