Proving His Mettle in the Reagan Justice Dept.

"That always struck me as a tension in his thoughts," said McGinnis, a Northwestern University law professor.

By that time, Alito knew he wanted to be a judge, said Phillips, a friend since their days in the Solicitor General's Office. But the selection process is fickle, Phillips said, and "other than making yourself the big fish in a small pond, I don't think it's anything you can plan for."

It was time for Alito to head home, to a place where a Reagan conservative might stand out in a sea of moderate Republicans. And to a job with a history of serving as a steppingstone to the bench.

No 'Political Naif'

Late one night in the fall of 1986, as Cooper and he were finishing up work, Alito asked his boss for a favor. He had just learned that the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey was going to step down, and he wanted the job.

The year before, Alito had married Martha Ann Bomgardner, the law librarian he met when he worked in the U.S. attorney's office as a young assistant appellate lawyer, and the couple had a baby boy. The decision to apply, she said, was driven as much by a desire to raise their children near their parents as any thought of becoming a judge.

"Sam, if there's any way I can help you, I will," Cooper recalls telling his 36-year-old deputy.

Cooper said he went directly to the top, making Alito's interest known to Reynolds and Meese.

Reynolds was an especially controversial figure in Washington. Two years earlier, the Republican-controlled Senate had rejected his nomination to become associate attorney general, with members accusing him of placing more importance on rolling back the civil rights of minorities, women and the disabled than on protecting them. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) charged that Reynolds had elevated his "own legal judgment over the judgments of the courts."

Reynolds said he felt that he and others working on the administration's civil rights "agenda cases" had been unfairly vilified, noting that the Supreme Court has since struck down some affirmative action programs. But at the time, "we were under fire from all quarters," a defining experience that he thought made those like Alito "more likely to stand fast than to drift," he said.

And that was important because Reynolds, still one of the most powerful figures in the Justice Department, had a plan that he and Meese hoped would carry forward the Reagan legacy long after they were gone. The idea was to quickly move gifted conservative lawyers into positions that could lead to the federal bench.

Alito fit the bill, Reynolds said.

"Were we interested more than anything else in finding younger, rather than older, intelligent people who could take the arguments and policies we felt were important and promote them? Did we think in terms of those people becoming judges? You bet your life," Reynolds said. "Sam was a good candidate for the grooming we were hoping would happen."