Legal legends join the Law School in naming Semester in Washington Program for Jack Keeney ’49

“Jack Keeney demonstrated what it means to live a life of exemplary, honorable public service, and that’s why we named this program for him,” said Penn State Law Professor Lance Cole, director of the School’s Center for Government Law and Public Policy Studies. Keeney’s career with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Criminal Division spanned five decades, twelve U.S. presidents, and twenty-three attorneys general, making him one of the longest serving career employees in the history of the federal government.

 

 

Stanley M. Brand, Distinguished Fellow in Law and Government and on-site director of the Semester in Washington Program, called the audience a “Hall of Fame of Washington Lawyers.” In addition to former Pennsylvania governor and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge ’72, Brand pointed out Seymour Glanzer and Earl Silbert, two of the original Watergate prosecutors; Hon. Stanley Sporkin and Irving Pollack, who led the Securities and Exchange Commission in the post-Watergate era; famed criminal defense lawyers Plato Cacheris and John Dowd; D.C. Attorney General and former House of Representatives General Counsel Irvin Nathan; and sponsors Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and the D.C. chapter of the Federal Bar Association. “Many of these luminaries served under Jack Keeney at the DOJ. His importance to criminal prosecution in this country, especially as it relates to integrity in public service, cannot be overestimated,” Brand added.

 

Reid Weingarten ’75, a partner with Steptoe and Johnson LLP and a leader of the white collar defense bar, described the enormous impact working for Keeney in the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ had on his career. He described how Keeney chose a case presented by Weingarten and a “skinny African American kid named Eric Holder” to be the first in a series of cases that applied the then-obscure Hobbs Act to corruption in Pennsylvania involving federal disaster relief funds. “In the Department of Justice bureaucracy there are dozens of reviews, but you knew the one review that mattered took place in Jack’s office,” Weingarten said. “There was no bravado, no dramatics. Jack was quiet, dignified, smart, and prepared…he was the heart and soul of the Criminal Division for decades. I think of myself as a ‘Crim Div’ guy to this day because of him.”

 

Weingarten added that he was not describing a special relationship that only he had with Keeney. “He was extremely important in my life, but I know that scores of lawyers in this country would say the same thing about him. It was a privilege and an honor to be before him.”

 

Son Terry Keeney, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia since 1982, said that his father was always very modest and low-key. He said that when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at Keeney’s funeral mass, “my jaw dropped. I had no idea some of the things he was involved with.”

 

Daughter Kathy Keeney said her father was “proud of going to Dickinson for law school.” She said that he and her mother “made all sorts of sacrifices in the 1960s and 1970s on a government lawyer’s salary to make sure that all five of their kids received a first class education.” She added when they were children their father would quiz them on names of members of the cabinet, Supreme Court justices, and past presidents. “He was a generous, caring man. I firmly believe that all those years at the Department of Justice kept Dad young and energized. The man loved his country, his family, his work,” she said.

 

Judge Sporkin, on behalf of the D.C. Chapter of the Federal Bar Association presented Keeney’s family with the Justice Tom C. Clark Award for Outstanding Government Lawyer. Glanzer described the great contribution Keeney made to law enforcement by negotiating the first agreement allowing U.S. prosecutors to obtain access to secret Swiss bank account records.

 

Professor Camille Marion who co-directs the Semester in Washington Program said that twelve students are enrolled in the spring program and will be working at the Justice Department, the SEC, the Center for International and Environmental Law, and other governmental and nonprofit organizations.