Bruce Castor

Bruce Lee Castor Jr. (born October 24, 1961) is an American lawyer and retired Republican politician from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

After serving stints beginning in 1981 with, respectively, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, the Northampton County (PA) District Attorney's Office, as an LBJ Congressional Scholar (Washington, DC) and defending Federal prisoners at FCI-Alderson (WV), Castor began his professional career as an assistant district attorney in 1985 before becoming district attorney of Montgomery County from 2000 to 2008.

After serving in the office since 1985, Castor was twice elected district attorney for Montgomery County, in which he is a lifelong resident, assuming office in January 2000.

After his second term ended, he was succeeded by Risa Vetri Ferman.

Castor and Asher had feuded for several years due to Asher's prior felony convictions for perjury, bribery, racketeering, and conspiracy in 1986 in the context of a political corruption scandal which also involved the State Treasurer, R. Budd Dwyer, leading to Dwyer's committing suicide at a press conference before his sentencing.

Asher had been state GOP Chair during the scandal and was convicted for participating in the bribery of Dwyer.

Asher's criminal past, connected to a political bribery scheme while he was the Republican state chair, became a subject of the campaign for the state's top law enforcement post.

Castor was unable to produce proof of any conspiracy against him and ran without the party endorsement in all but two counties, his home base in Montgomery County and Monroe County.

Castor lost 52.8% to 47.2%, despite winning overwhelmingly the same southeastern counties whose chairmen had repudiated him, and his home in Montgomery County, where he took nearly 82.5% of the vote.

Castor ran for the GOP nomination for Pennsylvania Attorney General in 2004 against Republican Tom Corbett.

Furious that he had lost endorsements of the southeastern GOP chairmen, Castor attacked Corbett and the county chairmen with allegations of backroom deals with Bob Asher, the state's national GOP committeeman.

In 2007, Castor challenged incumbent County Commissioner Tom Ellis, a one-time friend who had chaired Castor's campaigns in 1999 and 2003 but endorsed Corbett in 2004.

When his term as district attorney expired in January 2008, Castor took a position at the litigation firm of Elliott, Greenleaf & Siedzikowski in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania as a shareholder and director.

One of his notable clients was professional basketball player Marko Jaric of the Memphis Grizzlies, who was accused of sexual assault in Philadelphia.

Jaric was not charged in the case.

In 2009, Castor represented Mark Sargent, who was investigated (but not charged) for patronizing a brothel while he served as dean of the Villanova University School of Law.

In 2010, Castor represented his former boss, attorney Michael D. Marino, whose nephew accidentally shot and killed a man while hunting.

Marino, a former Montgomery County D.A., was present when the shooting occurred, despite knowing that his nephew was prohibited from owning and using firearms, owing to a felony conviction.

Marino was not charged in the case.

On July 1, 2013, Castor joined the law firm of Rogers & Associates (subsequently renamed Rogers Castor) as a civil-litigation lawyer in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, with former Lower Merion Commissioner and former Republican state senate nominee, Lance Rogers.

Castor was defeated for re-election as Montgomery County's District Attorney in November 2015.

When she sought (and won) election as judge in November 2015, Castor sought to return to that office, but lost to Ferman's first assistant, Kevin Steele, who ran an 11th-hour campaign contending Castor should have charged entertainer Bill Cosby in 2005.

Castor countered that Steele could have arrested Cosby himself in the intervening years if he believed credible evidence existed to do so.

A week before the election, Andrea Constand, who had accused Cosby of sexual assault in Montgomery County, sued Castor, claiming he defamed her by intimating she was not credible.

The Washington Post said that this suit contributed to Castor's defeat.

He was appointed as the first Solicitor General of Pennsylvania in March 2016, and also first deputy attorney general the following July.

Castor became acting attorney general less than a month later.

He led for the defense of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump along with American lawyer David Schoen.

He next took a seat on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, an elected position he held until January 4, 2016, when he was succeeded by Joe Gale.

On March 29, 2016, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced Castor's appointment (back-dated to March 21, when he actually took office) to the newly created position of Solicitor General of Pennsylvania.

While he operated freely as the de facto Attorney General and was widely recognized as such, Castor formally became the state's Acting Attorney General, replacing Kane, who resigned on August 17, 2016, following a conviction of a third degree felony perjury charge and several related misdemeanors.

Castor completed a nearly three-year term as a special assistant district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania on December 31, 2017, followed by an appointment as a special assistant district attorney of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania on January 6, 2018.

Governor Tom Wolf later nominated Bruce Beemer to fulfill the remaining balance of Kane's term which expired in January 2017.

Castor is the cousin of Steve Castor, who represented Trump during his first impeachment.

In November 2017, Castor sued Constand and her lawyers for defamation, charging that the lawsuit and its timing were retaliatory and ruined his political career.

In 2017, Cosby stood trial, but the trial ended in a hung jury with jurors unable to agree on Cosby's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, as Castor had predicted in 2005 would happen if he had elected to charge Cosby.

However at Cosby's retrial he was convicted on all three counts and he was sentenced to serve 3 to 10 years in prison.

After two years of time served the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the sentence, ruling that Castor's pledge to not prosecute Cosby was binding on all other prosecutors.

In 2017, Castor led the investigation into the Death of Tim Piazza at Pennsylvania State University.

Castor and Rogers Castor, renamed as Rogers Counsel, parted ways on December 31, 2020, and Castor joined the personal injury law firm of van der Veen, O'Neill, Hartshorn, and Levin.