Neal Katyal was born on March 12, 1970,[citation needed] in Chicago, Illinois, to immigrant parents originally from India.

[8] President Bill Clinton commissioned Katyal to write a report on the need for more legal pro bono work.

[9] In 1999 he drafted special counsel regulations, which guided the Mueller investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

While serving at the Justice Department, Katyal argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court, including his successful defense (by an 8–1 decision) of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Northwest Austin v.

[12] As Acting Solicitor General, Katyal succeeded Elena Kagan, whom President Barack Obama chose to replace the retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.

[13] On May 24, 2011, speaking as Acting Solicitor General, Katyal delivered the keynote speech at the Department of Justice's Great Hall marking Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Developing comments he had posted officially on May 20,[14] Katyal issued the Justice Department's first public confession of its 1942 ethics lapse in arguing the Hirabayashi and Korematsu cases in the US Supreme Court, which had resulted in upholding the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent.

[20] In 2015, Katyal had a cameo performed in the third season of the American television series House of Cards, portraying a lawyer arguing a case in the Supreme Court .

Katyal cited as an example that the company which supplied Zyklon B to the Nazis to kill Jews and other minorities in extermination camps was not indicted at the Nuremberg trials.

[27][28] In 2021, Katyal represented financial giant Citigroup in their efforts to recoup a mistaken transfer of $900 million to creditors of Revlon Inc.[29] He also worked with the prosecution team in State v.

[31] In 2022, Katyal argued for the respondents in Moore v. Harper before the Supreme Court, a case involving election law, redistricting and the independent state legislature theory.

[35] He endorsed President Donald Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court in an op-ed to The New York Times.

[46] Washingtonian Magazine named him one of the 30 best living Supreme Court advocates;[47] Katyal is married to Joanna Rosen, a physician.