C. Boyden Gray, who personified the conservative legal establishment as an attorney engaged in legal strategy, judicial appointments, policy, diplomacy or fundraising for every Republican president since Ronald Reagan, died Sunday at his home in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood . He was 80.
The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Eliza Gray.
Mr. Gray reached his highest government position as White House adviser under President George HW Bush. He became a trusted adviser who reportedly could stroll into the Oval Office whenever he pleased, and was the frequent subject of palace intrigue in the news about Mr. Bush’s cabinet.
Yet Mr. Gray’s influence extended beyond a particular job. Unlike other Washington conservatives of his generation, he kept pace with the shifts in the political direction of the Republican Party.
In the Reagan administration, Mr. Gray – then counsel to Mr. Bush during his tenure as vice president — in overturning federal regulations that were considered burdensome.
During the past years he did legal work for Donald J. Trump after the 2020 election and donated $3 million to fund an institute at George Mason University’s conservative law school – the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
In 2012, a short list of “some of the most established Republicans out there” in DailyExpertNews included such figures as billionaire donor David Koch, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey — and Mr. Gray. At his death, he served on the board of the Federalist Society, the group dedicated to spreading conservative jurists across the federal bank.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, as Mr. Bush’s longest-serving senior aide, he was sometimes accused of being a dilettante and reckless policy freelancer, especially in an ill-fated attempt to change government rules around affirmative action. But he was also able to take credit for a number of conservative victories.
He promoted the careers of promising young conservative lawyers — including two-time Attorney General William P. Barr and future Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito — and facilitated the appointments of the two men who would replace Mr. Bush on the Supreme Court. , Clarence Thomas and David Souter.
He led the team of advisors to Mr. Bush that Mr. Thomas selected as a candidate to replace Judge Thurgood Marshall upon his retirement in 1991. When Anita Hill mr. Thomas accused of sexual harassment as her supervisor at work, Mr. Gray took the lead in the decision to respond by breaking up Ms Hill’s case, even if it meant attacking her character, The Times reported that year.
Mr. Thomas was confirmed by a narrow 52-48 vote in the Senate. Mr. Souter’s nomination, in 1990, was less eventful, with the Senate confirming him by a vote of 90-9.
During the George W. Bush presidency and in consultation with Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, Mr. Gray formed the Judiciary Committee, which seeks to support conservative judicial candidates. He and liberal civil rights attorney Ralph G. Neas were seen as dueling “commanding generals” in a series of Supreme Court confirmation battles.
In 2005, when President Bush decided to appoint Roberts as the next Chief Justice, Mr. Rove made sure that one of the first people to know, Mr. Gray would be.
The following year, Mr. Gray became the United States Ambassador to the European Union. Amid tensions over the Iraq war, he worked on global trade agreements, trying to open up European markets to American goods.
Clayland Boyden Gray was born on February 6, 1943 in Winston-Salem, NC. His father, Gordon, was a national security adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and president of the University of North Carolina.
Gordon and Mr. Bush’s father, Prescott, were golf buddies. Their sons played tennis together in what became later known as Mr. Bush’s “tennis cabinet.”
Gordon Gray’s father, Bowman, made a fortune as president and chairman of RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company. To meet ethical requirements as counsel to President Bush, Boyden resigned as chairman of his family’s communications company, Summit Communications Group, which was worth $500 million in 1989, according to The Times.
Boyden’s mother, Jane Boyden Craige, died in his youth. His father then married Nancy Maguire, who was a housewife. He grew up in Winston-Salem and Washington.
He studied history at Harvard College, graduating in 1964, and served in the Marine Corps Reserve. He graduated head of his class from the University of North Carolina law school in 1968.
He worked for Chief Justice Earl Warren, a standard bearer of liberalism, and considered himself a Democrat until the late 1970s. By then, he was a corporate lawyer at the prominent Washington firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. He said he turned Republican because he opposed President Jimmy Carter’s economic policies.
He married Carol Taylor in 1984 and they divorced a few years later. In addition to their daughter, Eliza Gray, he is survived by two brothers, Bernard and Gordon, and two grandchildren.
Mr. Gray often gave the impression of being aloof or professorial. At 6-foot-6, he loomed over his peers; the Times reporter Maureen Dowd once described him as “bending like a parenthesis.” A penchant for playing bridge with eighties earned him a spot on a list of Washington’s “worst bachelors.”
But his poise also worked to his advantage. Early in his political career, in 1983, an anonymous government official explained his success in an interview with The Times as follows: “Boyden Gray learned long ago that to get ahead in Washington, you have to give credit to your boss for the good news and take the blame for what doesn’t work. And he learned that lesson well.”
