Eleanor ("Eldie") D. Acheson is an American Lawyer and was Assistant Attorney General of the United States in the Clinton administration. Days before her nomination she came under criticism because of her longtime membership of an exclusive club that had no black members.[1] During that scandal Senator Kennedy (D-MA), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Ms. Acheson "clearly meets the Senate Judiciary Committee standard on the club issue".[1]
As Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Acheson worked on the Year 2000 readiness and responsibility act (H.R. 775) also known as the "Y2K Act".[2]
She was Public Policy & Government Affairs Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force until January 2007, in which capacity she led efforts on Capitol Hill to secure critical funds for the LGBT community.[3] Although she left that job after her appointment in 2007 as Vice president and General Counsel of Amtrak,[4] she continues to be a strategy advisor of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force which she represents in key meetings on Capitol Hill.[3]
Ms. Acheson attended Wellesley College with Hillary Rodham Clinton who, in her 1969 student commencement speech, acknowledges the influence of Acheson in helping Clinton become the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver its commencement address.[5] Acheson received her JD from George Washington University Law School and went on to serve as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Edward T. Gignoux in Maine from 1973 to 1974. She then practiced for 19 years with the Boston-based firm Ropes & Gray, becoming a litigation partner in 1983.[6]