Leonard Anthony Leo (born November 1965) is an American lawyer, businessman, and conservative legal activist. He was the longtime vice president of the Federalist Society and is currently, along with Steven Calabresi, the co-chairman of the organization's board of directors.
Leo has created a network of influential conservative legal groups funded mostly by anonymous donors, including The 85 Fund and Concord Fund, which serve as funding hubs for affiliated political nonprofits. He assisted Clarence Thomas in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and led campaigns to support the nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Early life and education Leonard Anthony Leo was born on Long Island, New York, in November 1965, and raised in suburban New Jersey. His grandfather, an Italian immigrant, was a vice president of clothing company Brooks Brothers. He grew up in a family of practicing Catholics.
Leo's father was a pastry chef, who died when Leo was a toddler. When Leo was five years old, his mother married an engineer, and the family moved to Monroe Township, New Jersey, where he spent most of his childhood.Olear, Greg. "Leonard Leo's Unheavenly Rewards", Prevail, March 7, 2023. Accessed October 2, 2023. "I don't begrudge a fellow middle-class Jersey guy—Leo hails from Monroe Township, which is not to be confused with Alpine or Short Hills—from striking it rich." He graduated in 1983 from Monroe Township High School, where he and his future wife, Sally, were both named "Most Likely to Succeed" in the school's yearbook.Levine, Audrey. "MTHS graduates ready for future", CentralJersey.com, June 30, 2006. Accessed October 2, 2023. "Despite the sweltering heat and humidity, hundreds of parents, friends, relatives, teachers and administrators gathered on the football field at Monroe Township High School, craning their necks to see the more than 300 graduates as they paraded down the track at the graduation ceremony for the Class of 2006 on June 22... Leonard Leo, Class of 1983, now the executive vice president of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, traveled from his home in Washington, D.C., to share some thoughts with the graduates."
Leo attended Cornell University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1987. While an undergraduate, he was an intern in the office of Senator Orrin Hatch. He then attended Cornell Law School, graduating with a J.D. in 1989. He then clerked for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Career Judicial nomination work Leo founded the student chapter of the Federalist Society at Cornell Law School in 1989, and he went to work for the Society in 1991 in Washington, D.C. While a law clerk at the D.C. Circuit, Leo met then-judge Clarence Thomas, and the two became close friends. Leo delayed his start at the Federalist Society to assist Thomas in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Leo served at the Federalist Society in various capacities for more than 25 years. In 2019, The Washington Post reported that the Federalist Society had paid Leo an annual salary of more than $400,000 for a number of years.
Bush administration Leo took leaves of absence from the Federalist Society to assist the Bush administration's judicial nomination and confirmation efforts. This included the unsuccessful nomination of Miguel Estrada to the District of Columbia Circuit, as well as the successful confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump administrations In 2017, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote that Leo was "responsible, to a considerable extent, for one third of the justices on the Supreme Court". The Washington Post would later write that "few people outside government have more influence over judicial appointments now than Leo."
During Donald Trump's first administration, the Federalist Society and Leo played a key role in advising Trump on selecting individuals for federal judicial nomination, something Trump described as "one of the greatest achievements" of his first term. In 2016 Trump said, "We're going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society."
In May 2025, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump had overstepped his executive authority when he imposed sweeping global tariffs. One of the three judges on the trade court was appointed by Trump himself in 2017, in consultation with the Federalist Society. In a social media post on May 29, 2025, Trump denigrated Leo saying:
After Trump's post, Leo sent out a statement saying "I'm very grateful for President Trump transforming the Federal Courts, and it was a privilege being involved. There's more work to be done, for sure, but the Federal Judiciary is better than it's ever been in modern history, and that will be President Trump's most important legacy."
Nomination of Neil Gorsuch In 2016, Leo worked with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block President Barack Obama's replacement appointee, Merrick Garland. Leo's nonprofit, the Judicial Crisis Network reported that it spent more than $7 million to prevent Garland's confirmation. After Donald Trump's election, The New York Times described Leo as playing a "critical role" in reshaping the judiciary through Trump's Supreme Court nominees, first contacting then-appellate-judge Neil Gorsuch about potentially nominating him to the vacancy created by Scalia's death.
Leo's CRC Advisors coordinated "a months-long media campaign" in support of Gorsuch's nomination, including "opinion essays, contributing 5,000 quotes to news stories, scheduling pundit appearances on television," as well as television and radio advertisements. Between 2014 and 2017, entities affiliated with Leo raised over $250 million from donors including Charles Koch and Rebekah Mercer.
Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh In 2018, Politico reported that Leo had personally lobbied for Brett Kavanaugh's nomination for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Anthony Kennedy, raising upward of $15 million in support of his confirmation. The Judicial Crisis Network ran television and radio advertisements supporting Kavanaugh's nomination, and CRC advisors "hype[d] a theory that Christine Blasey Ford's accusation—that when they were both in high school, Kavanaugh pushed her on a bed and tried to remove her clothing—was actually a case of mistaken identity".
Nomination of Amy Coney Barrett In a 2018 interview, when asked about a possible vacancy on the Supreme Court during an election year, Leo stated that "If a vacancy occurs in 2020, the vacancy needs to remain open until a president is elected and inaugurated and can pick. That's my position, period." Leo said he would advise Trump not to act on an election year Supreme Court vacancy, adding that he had never asked Trump about the possible scenario.
After the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that Leo was involved in the selection process for Ginsburg's replacement. Ultimately, that process resulted in the October 2020 appointment of Amy Coney Barrett.
Conservative network building
Media outlets have described Leo as the "behind-the-scenes leader of a network of interlocking nonprofits that has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to support conservative judges and causes". Groups affiliated with Leo include CRC Advisors, The 85 Fund; the Concord Fund (formerly the Judicial Crisis Network); the Marble Freedom Trust; the Rule of Law Trust; and the BH Group, among others. The New York Times reported that Leo described this network as an effort to match "a big-money operation" of dark money spending aligned with Democratic Party in 2020. In 2022, the Marble Freedom Trust received a $1.6 billion donation from Illinois businessman Barre Seid, described as "the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history".
An October 2022 article by Kenneth P. Vogel in The New York Times detailed how Leo, who had been best known for his role in conservative judicial appointments, developed a larger coalition on the right. In January 2020, Leo announced that he would be leaving his position as vice president at the Federalist Society to start a new for-profit group, CRC Advisors, a conservative political consulting firm. That same year, Leo was paid $500,000 by the Federalist Society. Leo remained in his role as co-chairman of the Federalist Society's board of directors. CRC Advisors continued to work with the Federalist Society, as well as with Leo's Concord Fund and legal activist Edward Whelan.
Vogel wrote that Leo had built "one of the best-funded and most sophisticated operations in American politics, giving him extraordinary influence as he pushes a broad array of hot-button conservative causes and seeks to counter what he sees as an increasing leftward tilt in society." In 2023, ProPublica described Leo's activism, namely through the Teneo Network, as focusing on "'woke-ism' in corporations and education, 'one-sided journalism' and 'entertainment that's really corrupting our youth."
Teneo, from Latin, meaning "I hold" or "I grasp", says it has a plan to "crush liberal dominance" in journalism and education, as well as in business and politics. It consists of various loosely affiliated non-profit and for-profit entities, which collectively spent nearly $504 million between mid-2015 and 2021. These include two for-profit firms Leo at least partly controls, BH Group and CRC Advisors, which are also compensated by funding hubs in Leo's network, The 85 Fund and the Concord Fund.
The Teneo Network is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election.
Leo founded The 85 Fund, a nonprofit focused on conservative causes, in 2011. In 2011 and 2012, Leo arranged for Liberty Consulting, owned by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to be paid $80,000 by The Polling Company, owned by Kellyanne Conway and billed through The 85 Fund, formerly known as the Judicial Education Project. Leo directed Conway not to mention Ginni Thomas in paperwork, telling The Washington Post, "The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas's help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes," and that "Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni."
In June 2023, ProPublica reported that Leo helped organize and attended a fishing trip with Justice Samuel Alito and businessman Paul Singer, whose firms later were parties to litigation before the Supreme Court.
In March 2023, Politico reported that in 2021 and 2022, Leo had moved at least $43 million from his nonprofits into CRC Advisors, a for-profit business which he chairs. In August 2023, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Brian Schwalb, began investigating Leo and his network of nonprofit groups after receiving a letter from a progressive watchdog group claiming that Leo-aligned groups had violated nonprofit tax law.
Leo's attorney, David Rivkin, said in October 2023 that Leo would not cooperate with the investigation because Schwalb had "no legal authority" as the Leo nonprofits are not registered in Washington, D.C. Leo's network subsequently engaged in a pressure campaign targeting Schwalb. Twelve Republican attorneys general have challenged the legal basis of Schwalb's probe and Republican members of the U.S. House have announced a probe of Schwalb's investigation.