Nora Dannehy, a highly respected federal prosecutor who most recently assisted Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation of the 2016 election, will replace Robert Clark as general counsel to Gov. Ned Lamont, his office announced Monday.
Dannehy has had a long legal career both in and outside of government. She worked for more than two decades as a federal prosecutor and, in 2004, won a corruption conviction against former Gov. John G. Rowland. She was the first woman to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut in an acting capacity. From 2011 to 2013, she was deputy attorney general to state Attorney General George Jepsen.
“Not many people can say they’ve been appointed by both [former President] George Bush and George Jepsen, so I think that’s a pretty good recommendation,” Lamont said after a Monday press conference.
Dannehy made news last year when she resigned from a post in the Connecticut U.S. Attorney’s Office where she had been assisting in a probe of an FBI investigation into accusations of Russian electoral interference and collusion with the 2016 campaign of former President Donald J. Trump.
Dannehy also was associate general counsel and then chief compliance officer at United Technologies. In a press release, Lamont said she had earned a reputation as a problem solver and “champion for the public good.”
“She joins my administration at a unique time in our state’s history as we fight the COVID-19 pandemic in what we hope are its final months, and having her counsel will be a tremendous benefit to our office, and the people of our state,” the governor said in a press release.
Dannehy said she looked forward to the “new and challenging opportunity.”
Monday’s announcement follows Lamont’s nomination of Clark to serve as a judge on the state Appellate Court. Lamont called Clark a “great friend,” who left Dannehy “an amazing team of lawyers in the general counsel’s office who have been extraordinarily busy with executive orders.”
