Kent Markus

Kent Richard Markus (born February 1, 1959) is an American lawyer and experienced federal and state government senior manager and leader. He currently works as a Senior Advisor in the Director's Office at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Prior to joining the start-up Consumer Bureau, Markus served as Counselor and Chief Legal Counsel to Ohio's Governor [Ted Strickland] and a law professor and director of a child and family research and advocacy center at Capital University Law School. During the administration of President Clinton he was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Justice and before that had served as Chief of Staff in the Ohio Attorney General's office. Markus was also a federal judicial nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Early life and education

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Markus earned a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1981 and a law degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1984. As a high school student, he was selected to serve as a Page in the U.S. House of Representatives and eventually delayed entering college to serve as the Personal Page for U.S. House Speakers Carl Albert and Tip O'Neill. His father, Richard M. Markus, who also graduated from Northwestern and Harvard, is a prominent retired judge who served on the Ohio Court of Appeals. Judge Markus is also a past President of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the Ohio State Bar Association and the Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers.

Professional career

After graduating from law school, Markus returned home to Cleveland and clerked for U.S. District Judge Alvin I. Krenzler from 1984 until 1986. He then worked at an Ohio law firm doing plaintiff's civil rights work and representing labor unions from 1986 until 1989, while also serving as an adjunct law professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law from 1986 until 1988. He left to manage then State Senator Lee Fisher's ultimately successful campaign for Ohio Attorney General and subsequently served as Fisher's Chief of Staff in the Ohio Attorney General's Office. Two years later, at the outset of the Clinton Administration, Markus became the Executive Director/Chief of Staff at the Democratic National Committee before joining the U.S. Department of Justice two years later, in 1994.

At DOJ, Markus worked as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General in 1994, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and then Acting Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs from 1995 to 1996. He then served as Counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno and DOJ Deputy Chief of Staff from 1996 to 1998. Upon the birth of his son, he returned to Ohio where he founded the National Center for Adoption Law & Policy at Capital University Law School and taught what was at that time the nation's only regular law school class regarding the law of adoption. (He also taught what was likely the nation's only regular law school class in "Baseball and the Law".) The Center is known, today, as the Capital University Family and Youth Law Center.

Nomination to the Sixth Circuit

On February 9, 2000, President Clinton nominated Markus to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to take the place of David Aldrich Nelson, who had assumed senior status. With the U.S. Senate controlled by Republicans during Clinton's second term, Markus' nomination (along with virtually all other federal judicial nominations) languished. Despite Markus waging an unusually high-profile lobbying effort to win confirmation to the Sixth Circuit seat and the fact that he had the support of both of his home-state Republican senators, no hearing was ever scheduled on his nomination by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and no confirmation vote ever was taken by the full Senate. When George W. Bush became president in 2001, he subsequently withdrew 62 executive and judicial nominations, including that of Markus. In 2001, Bush nominated Jeffrey Sutton to the seat to which Markus had been nominated. Sutton won confirmation on April 29, 2003.

Subsequent career in state and federal government

On January 8, 2007, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland announced that Markus would be taking a leave of absence from Capital University to serve as Strickland's Chief Legal Counsel. He later also served as "Counselor to the Governor" assisting the Governor with issues across the spectrum of his responsibilities. Markus' name came up as a possible interim replacement for former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who resigned from office on May 14, 2008.

In January 2009, Markus said he was throwing his hat in the ring to be nominated by President Barack Obama to become a U.S. district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. However, in July 2009, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown announced that he would be recommending then-U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Black for the seat. The Senate confirmed Black to that seat in May 2010.

In the Spring of 2011, Markus became the Deputy Director for Enforcement at the newly established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He became the Bureau's Enforcement Director in January 2012. In February 2015, Markus became a Senior Advisor at the Bureau in the Office of the Director. He was succeeded as Enforcement Director by Tony Alexis.

Markus is married to Capital University Law Professor Susan Gilles. They have a son who is a student at Northwestern University.

See also

• Bill Clinton judicial appointment controversies