Sue Ellen Wooldridge - Department of Justice

Sue Ellen Wooldridge is Assistant Attorney General. According to whitehouse.gov: Sue Ellen Wooldridge is the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior... [more]

Sue Ellen Wooldridge is Assistant Attorney General. According to whitehouse.gov: Sue Ellen Wooldridge is the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to joining the Department of Justice in November 2005, Ms. Wooldridge served as the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, and before that as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton. Ms. Wooldridge grew up on a farm in Artois, California, where she was an avid horseback rider. She graduated from Willows High School in 1979, received her bachelor's degree in political science and history from UC Davis in 1983 (Phi Beta Kappa), and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1987, where she received the Outstanding Graduate Award of the National Association of Women Lawyers. She has worked as a litigator for the firm of Diepenbrock, Wulff, Plant & Hannegan in Sacramento, and as the legal and policy advisor to California Attorney General Dan Lungren, where she negotiated the multi-billion dollar 1998 tobacco settlement for the State of California. Ms. Wooldridge was one of the seven founding partners of Riegels Campos & Kenyon LLP, where she represented the National Association of Attorneys General in the enforcement of the 1998 tobacco settlement. She also served as general counsel for the California Fair Political Practices Commission. Ms. Wooldridge enjoys spectator sports of all kinds, and playing golf.

She made national media in February 2007 due to a scandal associated with the oil lobby. As a senior Justice Department official, Wooldridge bought a nearly $1 million vacation home with a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips months before approving consent decrees that would give the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup rules at some of its refineries. She has recently resigned due to the scandal.