News Brief: Sean Keveney Appointed Chief Counsel of FDA

On August 4, 2025, the U.S Deperatment of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that Sean Keveney will be the Chief Councel for the FDA. According to the latest FDA report, “Keveney most recently served as Acting General Counsel of HHS, where he led the Department’s legal team in advancing key administration priorities and ensuring rigorous legal standards across public health programs.”

When Keveney was Acting General Counsel for the HHS during President Trump’s administration, he led one of the most successful crackdowns in the Department’s history involving discrimination. The HHS found that Harvard University and Columbia University medical schools had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance. As a result, the Trump administration reached settlements with Columbia and Brown. The settlement required Columbia to undergo three years of independent monitoring for compliance with federal law and prohibited Brown from performing gender reassignment surgeries on minors or prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to them.

Robert Foster, the Department’s Principal Deputy General Counsel, will take the role of Acting General Counsel of HHS. Foster has extensive experience on administrative law and public health litigation and has been a trusted advisor to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on topics from vaccine regulation to bioethics.