Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz announced the appointment of Willard K. “Will” Tom as General Counsel for the agency, and the appointment of Peter J. Levitas, Mark W. Frankena, Howard Shelanski, and Judith Bailey to senior positions in the agency’s Competition and Economics Bureaus and the Office of Congressional Relations.
“We’re very pleased to welcome, and in two instances to welcome back, this group of extraordinarily talented professionals who will help ensure the continued effectiveness of this agency in protecting American consumers,” Leibowitz said. “With these appointments, we have a very deep bench.”
Will Tom, who has been practicing antitrust law as a partner in Morgan Lewis’s Washington, D.C. office, is rejoining the Commission, where he was Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition and led the Bureau’s policy office under former Chairman Robert Pitofsky. He previously served as counselor to the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, responsible for intellectual property, vertical restraints, and telecommunications matters. As the Commission’s chief legal officer and adviser, the General Counsel represents the agency in court and provides legal counsel to the Commission and its bureaus and offices. He graduated, cum laude, from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Pete Levitas, who will be a Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition, joins the agency from Dickstein Shapiro, LLP in Washington, DC. He formerly was Staff Director and Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Competition Policy & Consumer Rights Subcommittee, and he was Antitrust Counsel to the Subcommittee Chairman, former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine. Levitas also worked in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, and as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. He received his B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
Mark Frankena, who will become Associate Director for Competition Policy of the Bureau of Economics, has been Deputy Director for Antitrust in the Bureau for the past five years. He formerly served as Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Western Ontario, and as a principal at Economists Inc., an economics consulting firm where he specialized in antitrust litigation and the electric power industry. Frankena earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor degree with Highest Honors from Swarthmore College.
Howard Shelanski will become Deputy Director for Antitrust of the Bureau of Economics. Since 1997 he has been a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where he co-directed the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and was an affiliated professor at the Haas School of Business. He recently joined the Georgetown University Law Center faculty. Shelanski has served as chief economist for the Federal Communications Commission and as a senior economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Shelanski has a J.D. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford College. He served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, U.S. District Court Judge Louis H. Pollak, and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen F. Williams.
Judy Bailey, who was appointed as Deputy Director of the Office of Congressional Relations, returns to the FTC after serving as Consumer Protection Counsel for the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee. She also was counsel to the House Judiciary Committee’s former Monopolies and Commercial Law Subcommittee, and she worked for the FTC, including service in the Bureau of Competition as Assistant Director, and as Deputy Executive Director and Acting Executive Director. She has worked at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and in private practice at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and Debevoise & Plimpton. Bailey is an honors graduate of UCLA Law School and did her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan; she also holds Master’s degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of London.