Alito, Samuel Anthony, Jr.

Alito, Samuel Anthony, Jr. (əlē`tō), 1950–, U.S. government official and judge, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (2006–), b. Trenton, N.J., grad. Princeton (A.B., 1972), Yale Law School (J.D., 1975). In 1977 he became an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and he subsequently served in the Reagan and G. H. W. Bush administrations as assistant to the U.S. solicitor general (1981–85), deputy assistant U.S. attorney general (1985–87), and U.S. attorney for New Jersey (1987–90). He was appointed in 1990 to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, where his opinions were solidly but thoughtfully conservative and generally respectful of precedent. Alito was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 by President George W. Bush.