Neal Katyal

The wunderkind became a professor at Georgetown University Law Center at age 27 and has collected abundant praise and awards: He was named "One of the 90 greatest Washington lawyers over the last 30 years" by the Legal Times; "One of top 50 litigators nationwide under 45 years old" by American Lawyer Magazine; and "One of the 30 best advocates before the Supreme Court," according to the Washingtonian magazine.

At one point, Hamdan asked Katyal why he was spending so much time defending a Yemeni man who was awaiting a hearing before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.

"I said that my parents had come from India," Katyal told a group of law students in 2005. "They thought America was a place where people were treated equally and their kids would have an amazing life. What's happening in Guantanamo is fundamentally inconsistent with the tenets of being an American. These are the first military trials to single out foreigners. We are supposed to have equal protection under the law."

As the acting solicitor general, Katyal is the No. 1 person in charge of litigation strategy for the government. But before joining the Obama Justice Department in 2009, Katyal had argued just two cases in front of the Supreme Court before his appointment - Hamdan and Engquist v. Oregon, an equal protection case.

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