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Rep. Gowdy to Rejoin Old Firm as White Collar Criminal Defense Attorney

Oversight chairman retiring after five terms in Congress

Rep.Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., is retiring in January after five terms in Congress. (Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Rep.Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., is retiring in January after five terms in Congress. (Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Rep. Trey Gowdy will return to the private law firm in South Carolina where he worked in the 1990s and will be a white collar criminal defense attorney.

The South Carolina Republican is retiring from Congress in January after serving five consecutive terms.

The Charleston Post and Courier confirmed Gowdy’s return to Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, the Columbia, South Carolina-based firm that represents private individuals as well as corporate clients and provides lobbying services in the state and in Washington, D.C.

Gowdy’s wheelhouse, though, is the courtroom. He was an assistant U.S. attorney for six years before running for South Carolina’s 7th Circuit Solicitor in 2000.

As a member of Congress, he carved out a reputation as a partisan bulldog chairing the House Select Committee on Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, which eventually discovered Hillary Clinton used a private email to conduct official government business while she was secretary of state.

Since 2017, Gowdy has chaired the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Gowdy’s critics have condemned him for not fulfilling his duties to conduct proper oversight over the Trump administration, instead pursuing an investigation into perceived political bias among top officials at the FBI and Justice Department in 2016 and 2017 as those bodies investigated the president’s campaign, transition, and inauguration teams.

Gowdy has openly expressed a distaste for politics and has no intention to return to elected office.

“You’ll never see me on the ballot again,” he said on Fox News earlier this month.

“I will get back in politics if Tim Scott runs for president, and he says, ‘Look, I need you to go to Iowa and New Hampshire and knock on doors,’ which he probably won’t because I’d hurt him,” Gowdy said of his Republican colleague in the Senate and co-author of a book about their unlikely friendship.

Watch: A Look Back at Gowdy’s Time in Congress

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