President Donald Trump will nominate Hillsdale College alumnus Elliot Gaiser ’12 to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel as assistant attorney general, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Gaiser, who currently serves as the solicitor general of Ohio, recently defended the state before the Supreme Court in a discrimination case, The Collegian reported last month. Gaiser participated in the Dow Journalism Program and was the opinions editor of The Collegian during his time at Hillsdale.

Gaiser declined to comment.

College President Larry Arnn previously told The Collegian Gaiser is diligent, honest, intelligent, and successful in everything he tries.

“I have been proud to watch his growth,” Arnn said in March. “He once asked me if the students thought he was over-serious. I told him probably — he was very serious. I also told him not to worry about it. It was not a bad problem, if it existed, and anyway he would grow out of it.”

The Office of Legal Counsel advises the president on legal questions and controversies.

“The OLC provides an official, executive branch interpretation of the Constitution and laws, and those opinions carry quite a bit of weight when it comes to constitutional interpretation and legal interpretation,” Associate Professor of Politics Joseph Postell said.

Gaiser, a 2016 graduate of University of Chicago law school, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito during the court’s 2021-2022 term. In that term, Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

Following his time at the Supreme Court, Gaiser worked as an associate at the Jones Day law firm. Ohio attorney general Dave Yost then appointed him to serve as Ohio solicitor general, where Gaiser had clerked after his second year of law school.

Given the contested actions Trump’s administration has already taken, such as firing commissioners from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the OLC’s opinions will provide important guidance for the executive branch, according to Postell.

“It’s a quite important office and tends to not get as much attention as it deserves,” he said.