Legal Director, The Center for the Rights of Abused Children
Tim Keller is a lawyer who works to ensure all abused and abandoned children are safe and have access to their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
As senior vice president and legal director at the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, Tim’s public interest legal work seeks to defend the constitutional rights of children to be safe from abuse, to prompt timely placement with permanent parents, and to assure a child’s representation by legal counsel. In addition to constitutional litigation, Tim oversees the lawyers in the Center for the Rights of Abused Children’s one-of-a-kind pro bono Children’s Law Clinic and guides its policy initiatives.
When he and his wife, Lisa, hosted a teenage exchange student from Brazil several years ago, they realized how much they enjoyed helping a child thrive. The two felt called to help more kids. Over the following years, Tim and Lisa would become foster parents. Today, they enjoy offering respite care for children in foster care.
Intensely motivated by his time fostering children who’d been abused and neglected, Tim sees his work to ensure children have a constitutional right to counsel as a matter of life and death. As such, he’s particularly proud that in 2021 the Center for the Rights of Abused Children secured the rights of all children in Arizona’s foster system to be represented by legal counsel.
Before joining the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, Tim worked for nearly 20 years at the Institute for Justice. He served as lead counsel in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, a U.S. Supreme Court victory that protected Arizona’s pioneering school scholarship program. Tim also led the team that secured a U.S. Supreme Court victory in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which prevents states from discriminating against religious families and schools in educational choice programs. He has also litigated economic liberty and property rights cases in state and federal courts.
Tim earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Arizona State University. He clerked for Robert D. Myers, at the time the presiding judge of the Maricopa County Superior Court, and for Ann A. Scott Timmer on the Arizona Court of Appeals.
Tim and Lisa live in Chandler, Ariz., with their four sons, Daniel, Benjamin, Ethan and Noah, and a miniature schnauzer named Gus who has more than 12,000 Instagram followers. The Kellers have traveled to 49 of the 50 United States, and are always looking for recommendations for new card or board games for family game nights.
Former Vice President & Director, External Relations, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Jonathan Bunch is the former Vice President and Director of External Relations for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Jonathan was responsible for a broad range of strategic, programming, and media relations decisions that were integral to the Society's mission. In addition to his work for the Society, Jonathan regularly advised other organizations and public officials on matters of legal policy and judicial selection. Before joining the Society, Jonathan ran a 501c4 in Missouri, where he had served on the staff of Missouri Governor Matt Blunt and as a law clerk for The Honorable Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. on the Supreme Court of Missouri. Jonathan is a graduate of John Brown University and the University of Missouri School of Law. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, Amanda, and their four children.
United States Senator, Kentucky
Mitch McConnell is the Senate Majority Leader. Elected to that position unanimously by his Republican colleagues first in 2014 and again in 2016, he is only the second Kentuckian to ever serve as Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate. The first, Senator Alben Barkley, led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949.
Senator McConnell has served, again by the unanimous vote of his colleagues, as the Republican Leader since the 110th Congress. He is the longest-serving Senate Republican Leader in the history of the United States. McConnell previously served in leadership as the Majority Whip in the 108th and 109th Congresses and as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1998 and 2000 election cycles.
McConnell has been called “the most conservative leader of either party in the history of the Senate.” He has also earned a reputation as a “master tactician” for permanently locking in critical tax relief for working families and small businesses, and putting in place the most significant spending reduction legislation in a generation.
He has received praise from numerous media outlets for his work as Senate Majority Leader, and in 2015 TIME Magazine named McConnell one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
First elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell is Kentucky’s longest-serving senator. He made history that year as the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democrat and as the first Republican to win a statewide Kentucky race since 1968. On November 4, 2014, he was elected to a record sixth term by receiving broad support across Kentucky, winning 110 of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties.
McConnell graduated with honors from the University of Louisville College of Arts and Sciences, where he served as student body president. He also is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was elected president of the Student Bar Association.
McConnell worked as an intern on Capitol Hill for Senator John Sherman Cooper before serving as chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General to President Gerald Ford.
Before his election to the Senate, he served as judge-executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky, from 1978 until he commenced his Senate term on January 3, 1985.
McConnell currently serves as a senior member of the Appropriations, Agriculture and Rules Committees. He is the proud father of three daughters.
McConnell is married to Secretary Elaine L. Chao, the 18th U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Previously, Secretary Chao served for eight years as President George W. Bush’s U.S. Secretary of Labor. She is also a former president of the United Way of America and director of the Peace Corps.
Staff Attorney, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
Experience: Staff Attorney, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Springfield, VA, 1989-Present; Associate, Borland & Borland, Wilkes-Barre, PA, 1989; Intern, Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Atlanta, GA, U.S. Justice Department, 1988-89; Martindale-Hubbell® AV® Peer Review Rated.
Bar Admissions: Pennsylvania, 1989; District of Columbia, 1991; U.S. Supreme Court, 1992 (admitted only in PA & DC).
Law School: Emory University, J.D., 1989.
College: Hampden-Sydney College, B.A., with Honors in Political Science and History, magna cum laude, 1986.
Member: Federalist Society.
Publications: “Casting an Overdue Skeptical Eye: Knox v. SEIU,” CATO SUPREME COURT REVIEW, September 2012, at 333; “Making Windows into Litigants’ Souls: The Pernicious Potential of Gilpin v. AFSCME,” Engage, Apr. 2004, at 90; Co-author, “Big Labor’s Tyranny of the Minority: Forced Union Dues in Politics,” Federalist Society Free Speech & Election Law Newsletter, Fall 1996.
Reported Decisions (partial listing): Knox v. SEIU Local 1000, 132 S.Ct. 2277 (2012); Locke v. Karass, 555 U.S. 207 (2009); Cummings v. Connell, 402 F. 3d 935 (9th Cir. 2005); Prescott v. County of El Dorado, 177 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 1999), vacated, 528 U.S. 1111, reinstated in part, 204 F.3d 984 (9th Cir. 2000); Knight v. Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, 131 F.3d 807 (9th Cir. 1997); Johnson v. Lafayette Firefighters Ass’n, 51 F.3d 726 (7th Cir. 1995); Weaver v. University of Cincinnati, 942 F.2d 1039 (1991), further proceedings, 970 F.2d 1523 (6th Cir. 1992); Dixon v. City of Chicago, 948 F.2d 355 (7th Cir. 1991); Orr v. National Football League Players Ass’n, 147 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2845 (Va. Cir. Ct. 1994), aff’d, 150 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2191 (Va. 1995).
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