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VietnameseGriffin: ‘I know Noah will excel as Deputy Solicitor General the way he has in his previous roles’
LITTLE ROCK – Attorney General Tim Griffin issued the following statement announcing Noah Watson as the new Deputy Solicitor General for Arkansas:
“I am pleased to announce that Noah Watson—who has served as Deputy Attorney General, Opinions & FOIA Division for more than a year—will join our excellent Solicitor General team as Deputy Solicitor General. In February, I hired Autumn Patterson as our new Solicitor General, and the addition of Noah to this team makes it one of the best in the country.
“In 2023, Noah started working at the Office of the Attorney General in our Special Litigation Section before being promoted to Deputy AG over Opinions & FOIA. Noah’s skills in research, writing, and advocacy will now be at the State’s service in his new role as he takes on appellate cases at both the state and national levels. I love seeing the talented people in my office grow and take on new challenges, and I know Noah will excel as Deputy Solicitor General the way he has in his previous roles.”
Senior Associate Attorney General Kelly Summerside will serve as the acting head of the Opinions & FOIA Division.
Before joining the Office of the Attorney General, Watson was an associate attorney at Quattlebaum, Grooms & Tull PLLC in Little Rock. Before that, he served as a law clerk for Judge Lavenski Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Watson graduated from Harding University and the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
The Office of Solicitor General is responsible for handling Arkansas’s appellate and high-profile national litigation, helping shape both state and national jurisprudence. The office represents Arkansas in the United States Supreme Court and is responsible for constitutional, high-profile, and strategic litigation in the federal courts of appeal and the Arkansas Supreme Court. The office also assists with strategic and critical litigation at the trial level and works with other solicitor general offices across the country to coordinate nationwide litigation and amicus strategy. Since the office’s inception a decade ago, the office’s lawyers have successfully argued two cases in the United States Supreme Court and racked up an impressive string of appellate victories in voting rights, First Amendment, administrative, environmental, and criminal cases. The office currently consists of three lawyers and a paralegal. In 2024, the office’s lawyers were awarded the National Association of Attorneys General’s Best Supreme Court Brief Award for their brief in Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, 601 U.S. 346 (2024).
To download a PDF of this release, click here.
About Attorney General Tim Griffin
Tim Griffin was sworn in as the 57th Attorney General of Arkansas on January 10, 2023, having previously served as the state’s 20th Lieutenant Governor from 2015-2023. From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District, where he served on the House Committee on Ways and Means, House Armed Services Committee, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, House Committee on Ethics and House Committee on the Judiciary while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority.
Griffin is currently an officer in the Arkansas Army National Guard and holds the rank of colonel. Griffin served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps for more than 28 years. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in Mosul, Iraq.
His previous assignments include serving as the Commander of the 2d Legal Operations Detachment in New Orleans, Louisiana; the Commander of the 134th Legal Operations Detachment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and as a Senior Legislative Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. Griffin earned a master’s degree in strategic studies as a Distinguished Honor Graduate from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.
Griffin also served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush; Special Assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice; Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Arkansas; Senior Investigative Counsel, Government Reform and Oversight Committee, U.S. House of Representatives; and Associate Independent Counsel, Office of Independent Counsel David M. Barrett, In re: HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Griffin is a graduate of Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway, and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He attended graduate school at Oxford University. He is admitted to practice law in Arkansas (active) and Louisiana (inactive). Griffin lives in Little Rock with his wife, Elizabeth, a Camden native, and their three children.
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