Cuccinelli announces transition team

Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli is looking to predecessors from both parties for guidance on running the state’s law office, as well as enlisting the lawyer who beat Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell in court on a transportation fix that was ruled unconstitutional.

Cuccinelli, a Republican, announced yesterday that he selected as transition leaders former Attorneys General Andrew P. Miller, a Democrat, and Republican Richard Cullen, and ex-state GOP Chairman Patrick M. McSweeney.

Cuccinelli said Attorney General Bill Mims and McDonnell, who quit in February as attorney general to run for governor, are offering their assistance as well.

“It’s been said before the attorney general’s office is the best law firm in Virginia, and I agree, and I look forward to the task of serving the people of Virginia and leading that office,“ Cuccinelli said.

Miller, an unsuccessful candidate for governor and U.S. Senate in the 1970s, practices law in Washington. He’s from a storied Democratic family; his father ran for governor in the 1950s, opposing the conservative machine of the late U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., D-Va.

Cullen completed the term of Jim Gilmore, when Gilmore quit as attorney general in 1997 to run for governor. Cullen now leads a giant Richmond law firm that is closely aligned with McDonnell.

McSweeney is a Richmond lawyer who was on the staff of the commission that rewrote the Virginia Constitution in the early 1970s.

More recently, McSweeney was the lead lawyer in the case in which the Virginia Supreme Court overturned as taxation without representation a 2007 transportation-financing plan defended by McDonnell when he was attorney general.

In a conference call with reporters, Cuccinelli announced the transition’s executive director would be Republican Bernard L. McNamee, a Cullen law partner and lobbyist who served in the attorney general’s office under Jerry W. Kilgore. McNamee also was an aide to then-Gov. George Allen.

McNamee unsuccessfully sought an appointment to the agency that polices Virginia business, the State Corporation Commission.

In addition to disclosing his transition team, Cuccinelli said he is familiarizing himself with issues facing the attorney general’s office.

Cuccinelli said he is focusing on hiring decisions and developing his legislative wish-list for the 2010 General Assembly. The state senator from Fairfax County defeated Democrat Stephen C. Shannon, a delegate also from Fairfax County.

Cuccinelli plans to announce additional decisions next week, including structural changes to the office and staff selections.

Olympia Meola and Jeff E. Schapiro are staff writers for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.