The US Postal Service (USPS) has promoted Keith Weidner to general counsel, replacing Thomas Marshall who retired at the start of this month.
Weidner was previously deputy GC at USPS’s headquarters in Washington DC, where he was responsible for areas including procurement and property law, corporate and postal business law, legal strategy and legislative advice. In his new role, Weidner will be responsible for all legal matters and supporting other major business and strategic initiatives. He will serve as a member of USPS’s executive leadership and provide counsel to its board of governors.
USPS is an independent agency of the US government. It employs more than half a million people across the US and delivers an average of 371 million items of mail a day, according to its website.
Weidner has been with the postal service since 2003 when he joined as an honours attorney – a federal hiring initiative for law school graduates or judicial clerks to start a career in public service.
Marshall, meanwhile, retires after more than 30 years with USPS, having originally joined as an attorney in its Eastern Area law office in Philadelphia. Over those three decades he held a number of legal roles, including deputy managing counsel in its St. Louis office and managing counsel positions in the Capital Metro law office and its civil practice section. He became GC in 2013.
In a statement, USPS said: “Marshall is known for leading the law department in finding creative legal solutions to complicated issues. For example, Marshall and his teams developed litigation and appellate strategies to successfully obtain the exigent price surcharge that was in effect from 2014 through April of 2016, and which resulted in significant revenue for the postal service.”
It added that Marshall’s strategic leadership helped USPS to continue operating, adjust prices and change products after it lost a statutory quorum on its governing board, which lasted for almost five years from 2014.
Prior to joining USPS, he was a commercial litigator at the Resolution Trust Corp, having started his career in private practice at Reed Smith.
Weidner will be succeeded in the deputy GC role by Karoline Brownlie, who was previously managing counsel for legal strategy.
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