Theodore Bevry Olson (September 11, 1940 – November 13, 2024) was an American lawyer who served as the 42nd solicitor general of the United States from 2001 to 2004 in the administration of President George W. Bush.

He previously served as the Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1981 to 1984 under President Ronald Reagan, and he was also a longtime partner at the law firm Gibson Dunn.

After graduating from Los Altos High School in 1958, he studied communications and history at the University of the Pacific, where he was a charter member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity chapter.

[5] Olson was also the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel[6] when then-President Ronald Reagan ordered the Administrator of the EPA to withhold documents on the ground that they contained "enforcement sensitive information.

The Judiciary Committee forwarded a copy of the report to the Attorney General, requesting the appointment of an independent counsel investigation.

Olson argued that the Independent Counsel took executive powers away from the office of the President of the United States and created a hybrid "fourth branch" of government that was ultimately answerable to no one.

"[11][12][13] In July 2004, Olson retired as Solicitor General and returned to private practice at the Washington office of Gibson Dunn.

In 2006, Olson represented a defendant journalist in the civil case filed by Wen Ho Lee and pursued the appeal to the Supreme Court.

[15][16] In 2009, Olson joined with President Bill Clinton's former attorney David Boies, who was also his opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore, to bring a federal lawsuit, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, challenging Proposition 8, a California state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

The group challenged a city law requiring soda companies to include in their advertisements warnings that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with serious health risks like diabetes.

In September 2017, a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Olson and provisionally barred the city's mandated warnings.

[27] In November 2019, Olson represented the DACA recipients in the Supreme court case Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California.

Citing the complicated nature of death penalty cases, as well as the fact that many of the convictions already secured had been partially or fully overturn by appeals courts, he publicly encouraged the government to offer sentences of life in prison.

[40] Olson was a prominent critic of Bill Clinton's presidency, and he helped prepare the attorneys of Paula Jones prior to their Supreme Court appearance.

[44] In the end, it was Olson's mistakes that led to the departure of Reagan's appointed Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Anne Gorsuch Burford.

[44] He was then investigated by an independent counsel for allegedly providing false testimony to Congress, which some have termed as perjury, in an effort to conceal his own wrongdoing.

[44] Olson was a prominent figure in the Arkansas Project, which used the tax-exempt The American Spectator to transfer over $2 million to private investigators digging out anti-Clinton trash.

[45][46] He suggested that officials of the Clinton administration were involved in illegal activities and compared the White House to a Mafia family in anonymous pieces for the Spectator.