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Neal Kumar Katyal (born March 12, 1970) is the Acting Solicitor General of the United States, having succeeded Elena Kagan, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to replace the retiring Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Prof. Katyal was the "Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law" at Georgetown University Law Center and the lead counsel for the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that military commission set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay "violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions." While serving at the Justice Department, he has argued numerous Supreme Court cases, including his successful defense (by an 8-1 decision) of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the landmark case, Northwest Austin v. Holder.

Katyal is of Indian descent and was born in the United States to immigrant parents. His mother is a pediatrician and his father, who died in 2005, was an engineer. Katyal's sister, Sonia Katyal, is also an attorney; she teaches law at Fordham University. He was born in a Hindu household and studied at Loyola Academy, a Jesuit Catholic school in Wilmette, Illinois. He graduated in 1991 from Dartmouth College, where he was a member of Sigma Nu fraternity and the Dartmouth Forensic Union. In 1991, while a member of the Dartmouth Forensic Union, he reached the semi-final round of the National Debate Tournament, college's national championship tournament. and from Yale Law School in 1995. At Yale, Katyal studied under professor Akhil Amar and Professor Bruce Ackerman, with whom he published articles in law review and political opinion journals in 1995 and 1996. After graduating, Katyal clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Katyal served as National Security Adviser in the U.S. Justice Department in 1997-1999, and was commissioned by President Bill Clinton to write a report on the need for more legal pro bono work. He also served as Vice-President Al Gore's co-counsel in Bush v. Gore of 2000, and represented the deans of most major private law schools in Grutter v. Bollinger, the University of Michigan affirmative-action case that the Supreme Court decided in 2003.

He was named "Lawyer of the Year" by Lawyers USA for 2006, Runner Up for "Lawyer of the Year" by National Law Journal, one of the top 50 Litigators in the nation by the American Lawyer Magazine, one of the 30 best living Supreme Court advocates by Washingtonian Magazine, one of the 90 Greatest Lawyers over the Last 30 Years by Legal Times, and was awarded the 2004 Pro Bono Award by the National Law Journal.

He appeared on The Colbert Report on July 26, 2006 and June 17, 2008. Katyal is a Hindu.

His brother-in-law is Jeffrey Rosen, professor of law at George Washington University and legal affairs editor of The New Republic.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Neal Katyal", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0