COLUMBIA, S.C. — The chief legal counsel to Gov. Henry McMaster is in line for a lifetime seat on the federal bench in South Carolina, after the White House sent his nomination paperwork to the U.S. Senate even before President Donald Trump formally announced the pick.
The Senate Judiciary Committee posted William Grayson Lambert’s candidate questionnaire for a South Carolina federal district judgeship on Monday on its website. Trump typically announces judicial choices publicly before the paperwork appears, and as of Monday he had not done so.
If the Senate confirms him, Lambert would fill the seat of Judge Timothy Cain, who took senior status on Oct. 1. The Judiciary Committee is expected to take up the nomination at a hearing on Wednesday, Nov. 18.
Lambert has been the governor’s lawyer since May 2021 after working in private practice from 2013. He earned his law degree from Duke University in 2012 and clerked for Judge Dennis Shedd on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the governor’s office he has handled many of the state’s highest-profile legal fights. He defended South Carolina’s six-week abortion law before the state Supreme Court, which upheld it in 2023, and represented McMaster in cases over the state’s execution methods, its congressional map and the governor’s National Guard deployment to Washington, D.C.
This is not his first run at a judgeship: in 2023 he applied for the state Court of Appeals. The state’s judicial screening commission found him qualified but did not advance him as a nominee.
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