Garnett Thomas Eisele

Garnett Thomas Eisele (born November 3, 1923)^[1] is a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Eisele had attended several Republican National Conventions with his grandfather, Martin Eisele.^[2] Eisele was a private in the United States Army during World War II from 1942 to 1946. In 1947 he procured a A.B. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He then obtained both LL.B. and LL.M. degrees in 1950 and 1951, respectively, from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From 1952 to 1961 Eisele was in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was in private practice in Hot Springs from 1951 to 1953. He was an assistant United States Attorney in Little Rock from 1953 to 1955. After he was not nominated for U.S. Attorney, Eisele returned to private practice in Little Rock from 1956 to 1970. In the early 1960s Eisele supported Winthrop Rockefeller's attempt to revive the Arkansas Republican Party. At the time Rockefeller was engaged in an intraparty rivalry with state chairman William L. Spicer of Fort Smith, the owner of a chain of drive-in theaters.

From 1966 to 1969 Eisele was the legal advisor to Rockefeller, who was elected governor in 1966 and 1968. Eisele was Rockefeller's choice for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, a position vacated in 1969 by Gordon E. Young. Two other Arkansas Republicans had expressed interest in the judgeship, Odell Pollard of Searcy in White County, then the state Republican chairman and the choice of former U.S. Senate nominee and later Arkansas state party chairman Charles T. Bernard, and state Circuit Judge Henry M. Britt of Hot Springs, the 1960 Republican gubernatorial nominee against Orval E. Faubus.^[3] On January 23, 1970 Eisele was nominated by President Richard M. Nixon. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 5, 1970. He received his commission the following day. He served as chief judge from 1975 to 1991, having assumed senior status on August 1, 1991.

Sources

• Garnett Thomas Eisele at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.