Attorney General: Francis B. Biddle

Francis Beverly Biddle was born in Paris, France, on May 9, 1886. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1909 and his Bachelor of Laws degree from Harvard Law School in 1911. Upon graduating from law school, his first job was as private secretary to Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes for the 1911–1912 U.S. Supreme Court term. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1912 and began to practice before the Supreme Court in 1927. From 1922 to 1926, he was Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He served as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board in 1934 through 1935, and from 1938 through 1939, was Class C Director and Deputy Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. From 1938 to 1939, he was chief counsel of the Special Joint Congressional Committee to Investigate the Tennessee Valley Authority. Biddle was judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1939 to 1940. From 1940 to 1941, he was Solicitor General of the United States. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Biddle as Attorney General of the United States on September 5, 1941, and he remained in that office until June 30, 1945. Biddle was appointed by President Harry S. Truman to sit as a judge on the international tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany. He was a prolific author, principally on legal themes. Biddle died on October 4, 1968, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.