Phila. lawyer tapped to be first deputy attorney general for incoming Pa. AG

A Philadelphia-area attorney has been tapped by incoming state Attorney General

Kathleen Kane to serve as the top law enforcer’s first deputy attorney general.

Adrian R. King, Jr., who was most recently employed as a partner with the firm Ballard Spahr in Philadelphia, was named as Kane’s top deputy, Kane’s transition office announced in a recent news release, which was posted to the website PoliticsPa.com.

Kane, formerly an assistant district attorney in Luzerne County, which is in Northeastern Pennsylvania, was the first woman and Democrat to ever be elected to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office since the position became an elected post back in 1980.

Linda Kelly has been serving as the appointed interim Attorney General for the past couple of years after now-Gov. Tom Corbett left his job as Attorney General to become the commonwealth’s chief executive.

Corbett had appointed Kelly to temporarily succeed him with the understanding that Kelly would not run for election to the post.

Kane, who won election back in November, announced that King was tapped to serve as her top deputy because of his state government experience.

In February 2005, King was appointed to Gov. Ed Rendell’s cabinet, serving as the director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

Prior to that appointment, from 2003 to 2004, King served as Rendell’s deputy chief of staff, during which he oversaw the commonwealth’s public safety and homeland security functions with respect to both operations and policy, and King also served as the governor’s point of contact for the Pennsylvania State Police, Office of Homeland Security, State Fire Commissioner, Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, Department of Corrections, Emergency Management Agency and Board of Probation and Parole, according to Kane’s press release, which contained King’s partial biography.

King has also served as the chairman of the Pennsylvania Justice Network, which is an integrated criminal justice information network that enables 39 state departments and agencies, 266 county government and municipal police departments, and 17 federal agencies to share and access key criminal justice data, such as police mug shots, fingerprints, driver’s license pictures and arrest warrant information.

King, who obtained a law degree from Temple University School of Law, does not, however, appear to have a prosecutorial background.

At Ballard Spahr, King was a member of the Business and Finance Department and he served as co-chairman of both the Government and Regulatory Affairs and P3/Infrastructure Practice Groups.

In his past, King also participated in a number of public safety related committees, such as Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s Emergency Services Transition Committee, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education Security Committee, and Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street’s Task Force on Police Discipline.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is served by several hundred prosecutors, attorneys, investigators, agents and support staff in offices across the commonwealth.