Butts, Maher Join Obama in Washington

President-elect Barack Obama is attracting even more Washington lawyers to his incoming administration.

Cassandra Butts, who met Obama at Harvard Law, will serve as deputy White House counsel. She is currently general counsel for the transition. Her previous jobs include senior veep for domestic policy at the Center for American Progress; senior adviser to former Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri; assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund; and legislative counsel to Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania.

Shawn Maher, a longtime aide to Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, will be Obama’s deputy director of legislative affairs for the Senate. Most recently he served as staff director and general counsel to the Senate Banking Committee, which Dodd chairs. He has also been Dodd’s legislative director, and his counsel when Dodd was chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

The names of two other DC lawyers have been mentioned in connection with the Obama team. Peter Rundlet, former counsel to the 9/11 Commission, has been mentioned as a possible deputy staff secretary at the White House. Mark Childress, a partner at Boston’s Foley Hoag LLC LLC LLC and former chief counsel to Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, has been mentioned as chief of staff at the Department of Health & Human Services. Obama has tapped Daschle to head up the DHHS.

Via The BLT.