Fighting for a Cause: David E. Kendall, Esq.

David Evan Kendall is an American attorney who advised President Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal and represented Clinton during the impeachment trial.

Kendall was born in 1944 and grew up in Sheridan, Indiana. He obtained his B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Wabash College in 1966 and as a Rhodes Scholar, an M.A. at Oxford University (1968), where he and Bill Clinton met. He took a J.D. at Yale Law (1971).

During the Freedom Summer of 1964, Kendall worked with the COFO on voter registration, and was the roommate of murdered civil rights worker Andrew Goodman during the last week of his life. He was arrested a few times and convicted once in Mississippi during the summer of 1964, while working to register voters.

After a stint in the U.S. Army, where he was a 2nd Lieutenant, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White. He was an associate counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for five years. He then entered criminal defense practice, handling high-profile death penalty cases including Coker v. Georgia and the death penalty appeals of John Arthur Spenkelink and Gary Gilmore.

He has appeared in trial courts in 22 states and has argued appeals in 6 federal courts of appeal, 7 state supreme courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States. He has briefed and argued numerous important criminal cases before the Supreme Court on pro bono publico assignments.

He is a partner with Williams & Connolly, a Washington, D.C. law firm since 1981, where he started in 1978 as an employee. He has been married to Anne L. Kendall, a psychologist with the Wake Kendall Group, since 1968, and they have three children. He presently works on diverse matters such as intellectual property, criminal investigations, and the Clinton Library foundation. His notable clients have included AOL, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Washington Post, the National Enquirer, and the Baltimore Orioles.

http://www.wc.com/dkendall

Back in the 1990s I walked past David Kendall near his Williams and Connolly office.  He was deep in thought, or so it seemed, as if he were reviewing a legal argument in his mind.  He didn't appear to recognize me.