Chairman Wheeler Announces General Counsel Transition

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced the departure of Jon Sallet as the FCC General Counsel and his intention to appoint Howard Symons as the next General Counsel. Sallet will become the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Litigation in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. In his new position as FCC General Counsel, Symons will lead the office that serves as the principal legal advisory office to the Commission as a whole.

Prior to joining the Commission, Sallet was been a partner in three law firms, served as chief policy counsel for MCI Telecommunications (later MCI WorldCom), and served as Director of the Office of Policy & Strategic Planning for the Department of Commerce. He was a law clerk to the Honorable Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and the Honorable Edward A. Tamm of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Symons has been working in telecommunications in both the public and private sectors for more than 30 years. Before his appointment to the FCC’s Incentive Auction Task Force in January 2014, he was the chair of the communications practice at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C. and served as senior counsel to the Subcommittee on Telecommunications in the US House of Representatives. He graduated from Yale University and earned his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.