Times of India: PIO Neal Katyal poised to become US solicitor general

WASHINGTON: While abundant attention is focused on President Barack Obama's choice of US Solicitor-General Elena Kagan as a nominee for the Supreme Court, her putative promotion has pitch-forked an Indian-American legal whiz Neal Katyal to the position she will vacate as the US government's top legal counsel.

In a letter she sent to the Supreme Court on Monday, Kagan told the country's highest judicial forum that in light of her nomination to the Supreme Court, the Principal Deputy Solicitor General, Neal Kumar Katyal, will serve as Acting Solicitor General in all filings involving the US Government after the date of her nomination. "I ask that you please address future correspondence from the Court to him, and that the Court's docket sheets reflect his designation as Counsel of Record," she advised the court in a May 17 letter...

Katyal, who is just 40, is considered one of the country's top legal brains. Son of successful Indian immigrant professionals (his mother is a pediatrician and his late father, an engineer), he graduated in 1991 from Dartmouth College, and from Yale Law School in 1995, becoming a professor at Georgetown University Law Center when he was only 27. He was named "one of top 50 litigators nationwide under 45 years old" by American Lawyer Magazine and "One of the 30 best advocates before the Supreme Court" by Washingtonian magazine.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/5946962.cms