Senate Approves St. Louis, Mo. Native as Ambassador to Ireland

McCaskill: Kevin O’Malley will make Missouri, and America, proud

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today released the following statement after the Senate unanimously approved St. Louis native Kevin O’Malley to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland.

“Kevin will make Missouri, and America, proud. This is a man who loves his country, and who knows and has a deep appreciation for Ireland. This country is an important ally, and that friendship is just as important now as it ever was. Ambassador O’Malley is a great choice to manage this critical relationship.”

Earlier this year, McCaskill introduced O’Malley to her colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and urged his swift confirmation, calling him “a terrific choice” for the ambassadorship.

McCaskill has also called on the Irish government to make public and transparent its adoption records in a letter to Irish Ambassador Anne Anderson. In February, she met with Philomena Lee, whose story of a decades-long search for the son who was forcibly removed from her, adopted and raised by a family in St. Louis, Mo., is the subject of a recent book and Oscar-nominated film. Philomena and her daughter created the Philomena Project in association with the Adoption Rights Alliance to reunite American children separated from their Irish families through forced adoption.

Kevin O’Malley is an attorney in the Litigation Practice at Greensfelder Attorneys at Law in St. Louis, focusing on medical negligence, federal white collar criminal defense, and product liability defense. He previously served as Special Attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section at the Department of Justice, as well as Assistant United States Attorney in St. Louis, and was an instructor for the American Bar Association’s Central and East European Law Initiative in Moscow and Warsaw.

Mr. O’Malley serves as the only non-physician member of the Missouri Board of Healing Arts, the state’s licensing and disciplinary body for physicians and is the senior author of the nine volume treatise Federal Jury Practice and Instructions. He received a B.A. and J.D. from St. Louis University School of Law. 

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