Fahy, Charles

(1892-1972)

   Born in Rome, Georgia, and educated at Notre Dame University and Georgetown University Law School, Charles Fahy qualified as a lawyer in 1914. After serving as a navy pilot during World War I, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., until 1924, and then in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1933, he became assistant solicitor in the Department of the Interior; in 1935 general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board; in 1940 assistant U.S. solicitor general; and in 1941 solicitor general, a position he held until 1945. After holding several other government appointments, including legal adviser to the American Military Government in Germany, in 1949 he was appointed chair of the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services established by President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981 in 1948, with responsibility for overseeing the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces. In 1949, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals on the D.C. circuit and later took senior status as a federal judge.