Joe Biden has named Brownsville attorney and retired judge Rose Vela director of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships.
The White House announced the news on March 12. The commission was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson by executive order in 1964. Vela said the job involves several aspects, among them recruiting new fellows for the upcoming year, and conducting regional and final interviews as part of the application process.
The commission’s educational component involves recruiting leaders from across the country to speak to the fellows, who are then placed within various agencies of the executive branch, she said.
“There’s only 15 fellows that are selected per year,” Vela said. “We have quite a few famous fellows who have come out of the program, such as Colin Powell, Sanjay Gupta and Doris Kearns Goodwin, to name a few. There’s quite a few alumni from the program who have gone on to do great things.”
Vela, who is married to U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela Jr. of Brownsville, earned her law degree from St. Mary’s School of Law in San Antonio. After law school she served as briefing attorney to two different Texas Courts of Appeals, then entered private civil practice with a focus on appellate cases. She presided over thousands of complex civil and felony criminal cases and numerous jury trials during her two four-year terms as a trial judge.
While a state district judge Vela was elected by her colleagues to serve as Nueces County presiding administrative judge. In 2006, she won a contested general election to become an appellate judge on the 13th Court of Appeals, where she heard appeals from more than 20 Texas counties, authored hundreds of legal opinions and substantially reduced the court’s backlog of cases.
Vela, who retired from the state judicial branch in 2016, said she’s in the process of winding down her Brownsville law practice to take on the new assignment in Washington D.C.
“I’m just so honored and humbled and excited about it,” Vela said. “I’m very, very happy to be going into public service again.”
She spent part of Monday morning at the White House getting her new credentials, ID badge, access code, phone and computer, and visiting her new office for the first time, located in Lafayette Square kitty-corner to the White House. Vela said she thinks the new administration takes the fellowship commission seriously and that she’s glad to be part of it.
“There’s a new air about D.C. and it’s a breath of fresh air,” she said.
