Lloyd Kirkham Garrison (19 November 1897-2 October 1991) was an American lawyer who represented J. Robert Oppenheimer at his security clearance trial in 1956.
Biography[]
Lloyd Kirkham Garrison was born in New York City, New York, the great-grandson of William Lloyd Garrison and the grandson of Wnedell Phillips Garrison. Garrison served in the US Navy during World War I before graduating from Harvard in 1922, and he moved to New York City and joined Elihu Root's law firm in 1922. Garrison joined the pro-civil rights National Urban League in 1924, and, as a lawyer, he investigated "ambulance chasing" and bankruptcy fraud. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover appointed him special assistant to the US Attorney General, where he invested bankruptcy fraud nationwide. Garrison became known as one of the best lawyers in the country, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him as the first chairman of the National Labor Relations Board in 1934. Garrison was considered for the US Supreme Court on Willis Van Devanter's resignation in 1937, and he served on the National War Labor Board during World War II. After the war, he leftthe University of Wisconsin and returned to New York, where he practiced corporate law and represented high-profile clients such as J. Robert Oppenheimer during his security clearance trial in 1956 and Arthur Miller during his HUAC trial in 1956. Garrison served on the board of directors of the ACLU from the late 1930s until 1965 and on the New York City Board of Education from 1961 to 1967, and he died in 1991, having remained active in his law firm until the end of his life.