Elbert Lin

Elbert Lin is an American lawyer who served as the first Solicitor General of West Virginia from 2013 to 2017. He is currently a partner and chair of the Issues and Appeals practice group at Hunton Andrews Kurth as well as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States.

Elbert Lin
1st Solicitor General of West Virginia
In office January 14, 2013 – September 1, 2017
Appointed by	Patrick Morrisey
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Lindsay See
Personal details
Born	New York City, New York, U.S.
Spouse	Laurie Barber
Education	Yale University (BA, JD)

Early life and education

Lin was born in New York City, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.^[1][2] He attended Yale College and Yale Law School, where he was managing editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Career

After graduating from law school, he clerked for Senior Judge Robert Keeton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts before becoming a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division during the presidency of George W. Bush. He left the department to clerk for Judge William H. Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and worked at Wiley Rein in Washington, D.C. from 2007 to 2013, excepting a year-long leave of absence he took to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during the Court's 2010 term.

In 2013, he was appointed by Patrick Morrisey, the newly elected Attorney General of West Virginia to serve as West Virginia's first solicitor general.^[3][2] The state's appeals were previously handled by the Criminal Appellate Division of the Office of the Attorney General, now under the purview of the Solicitor General.^[4] In the early stages of the case West Virginia v. EPA, he was the lead counsel for the petitioners, and he succeeded in convincing the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a stay on enforcement of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan. Lin joined Hunton & Williams (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) in 2017.^[5][1] He was appointed as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States in 2020.