President Trump on Monday announced he will nominate FERC General Counsel James Danly to fill the Republican vacancy left by the death of Kevin McIntyre.
The commission was reduced to three members — Chairman Neil Chatterjee and Commissioners Richard Glick and Bernard McNamee — after the departure of Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur in August.
That has left the commission without a quorum in some cases as Glick, the lone Democrat, has been recusing himself from votes involving his former employer, Avangrid. (See related story, FCA 13 Results Stand Without FERC Quorum.)
Danly, formerly a member of the energy regulation and litigation group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was tapped to serve as general counsel in September 2017, a month after Chatterjee was named chairman.
Danly earned his J.D. at Vanderbilt University Law School in 2013 and a bachelor’s from Yale University, where he studied classics and English.
After law school, he clerked for Judge Danny Boggs of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
He was a managing director of the Institute for the Study of War, a military think tank in D.C., and served an International Affairs Fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A former U.S. Army officer, he served two deployments to Iraq and received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
During his first tour, with an infantry company in the Dora district of Baghdad, he authored and executed Operation Close Encounters, a tactical counterinsurgency program during the troop surge of 2007, according to a biography he provided to the Council on Foreign Relations.
In his second tour, he served under General David Petraeus at Multi-National Force – Iraq.
If confirmed, Danly’s term would end June 30, 2023.
In a profile in June, E&E News reported that Danly espouses a legal philosophy he calls the “humble regulator” — that FERC should work under a very narrow reading of the Federal Power Act and Natural Gas Act rather than using the agency’s discretion to interpret the statutes.
E&E said Danly’s philosophy was influenced by the conservative Federalist Society, which has served as a clearing house for many of Trump’s judicial appointments.
