© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about his plans for continued student debt relief after a U.S. Supreme Court decision blocking his plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt, at the White House in Washington, U.S. June 30, 2023. REUTERS/
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden has nominated Virginia Solicitor General Andrew Ferguson and Utah Solicitor General Melissa Holyoak to fill Republican slots at the Federal Trade Commission, the White House said in a statement on Monday.
If the U.S. Senate confirms Ferguson and Holyoak, the FTC, which enforces antitrust law and rules against deceptive advertising, will have a Democratic chair, Lina Khan, and two Republican and two Democratic commissioners.
Ferguson was chief counsel to U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell from 2019 until 2021. He has also worked for Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley.
A native of Virginia, Ferguson has an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Holyoak is the Utah Solicitor General with the Utah Attorney General’s Office. She has previously worked as an associate at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP, and at Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, which focuses on fighting class action lawsuits and aggressive regulation, as well as at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness.
Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Utah, as is her law degree.
