Joshua P. Groban

Groban has served as senior adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown since 2011 and was legal counsel for Brown’s gubernatorial campaign in 2010. He has counseled Brown on making about 500 judicial appointments, furthering the governor’s diversity goals. Nearly 40 percent of the appointees identify as nonwhite. He joined Brown from a partnership at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.

“In 2010 I was happily working away at Munger Tolles and doing a little bit of work for the Brown campaign,” he said. “When I started helping it was me and Brown and two interns. That was it. We were a lean fighting machine. I took a leave from the firm; they were very supportive. I planned to come back, but the governor can be very persuasive and asked me to stay around and give him legislative and policy advice.”

It’s now been a year since Associate Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar retired from the state Supreme Court, leaving a short bench. So where’s Brown’s nominee? “It’s an important decision and one he doesn’t want to rush,” Groban said. “He’s engaged, that’s all I can say.”

Groban scrutinizes applications and interviews candidates for the bench as a key part of an exhaustive evaluation process. In August, Brown’s Commission on Judicial Appointments placed Halim Dhanidina on the 2nd District Court of Appeal, the first practicing Muslim to sit on an appellate court in the U.S. “I’ve been reminded twice what a superior person he is,” Groban said. “When I interviewed Halim for the [Los Angeles County] Superior Court [in 2012], I jotted in the margin of my notes, ‘Could be on the Court of Appeal one day.’” Brown, Groban added, “is committed to the idea that the bench will reflect the great diversity of California.”

That diversity, Groban said, isn’t confined to race, gender and sexual orientation. “We also have placed on courts people from a wide range of practice areas, such as public defenders, professors and family law practitioners. I once asked a public defender in San Diego and whether she had talked to former PDs on the San Diego bench. She told me there wasn’t a single one — and that’s a very big county.”

Groban also advises Brown on high-profile litigation involving education, the judiciary, criminal justice, civil rights and immigration-related proceedings against the Trump administration.

“He’s a lawyer’s lawyer,” Groban said of his boss, who once clerked at the state Supreme Court. “As a governor he can still cite cases from memory and can tell you why a certain law exists.”

Will Groban return to Munger Tolles when Brown terms out in January? “He reminds us every day that there’s a lot of work to be done before then,” Groban said. “He keeps us busy. There’ll be time later to decide what I’ll do.”

— John Roemer