King & Spalding on Wednesday said it has hired the former head of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's policy office, the latest in a series of government hires the U.S. law firm has made during the final days of the Biden administration.
Lauren Roth joined King & Spalding as a partner in its Washington office, the firm said. Roth has held several roles in the FDA, including most recently serving as the agency's associate commissioner for policy.
Drug makers and others are gearing up for potential large-scale health care policy shifts under the administration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, including in the areas of drug pricing and antitrust regulation.
Roth "operated at the highest levels of FDA across multiple administrations, making her ideally situated to help our pharmaceutical and medical device clients," Nikki Reeves, who co-leads King & Spalding's government matters and regulation practice, said in a statement.
Roth is the third government hire Atlanta-founded King & Spalding has announced this week, and part of a broader wave of lawyers leaving government for private practice before Trump takes office on Monday. Other lawyers have joined Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan this week.
King & Spalding said on Monday that it hired Nema Milaninia, a former senior counsel to Google who served as a senior adviser in the U.S. State Department, working on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence matters.
On Tuesday, the firm tapped Ryan Majerus, a former U.S. Commerce Department official who saw the Biden administration's enforcement of U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty laws.
Both Roth and Majerus are partners in King & Spalding's government matters and regulation, while Milaninia is a partner in the firm's special matters and government investigations.
The firm is home to several former top U.S. government officials, including Rod Rosenstein, who was Donald Trump's deputy U.S. attorney general, and Sally Yates, who served in that role at the U.S. Justice Department during the Obama administration.
In September, the firm welcomed back Robert Hur, the U.S. special counsel who investigated President Joe Biden handling of sensitive government materials.
