E.C. Glass graduate enjoying clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice

By Dave Thompson
Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: September 2, 2008

Until the time he headed off to college Andrew Oldham’s future career of choice always involved medicine.

And nowhere in his mind, Oldham said, rested the possibility of one day clerking for a United States Supreme Court Justice.

“I feel like I won the lottery in many ways,” Oldham, 29, said of his current one-year clerkship for Justice Samuel Alito, which began in late July.

“It’s incredible to walk into what I consider to be the most beautiful building in the world, and to have it as my office building every day.”

Oldham has a hard time pinpointing when his interest changed from medicine to government.

“I was dead set on being a doctor, and I was going to go to medical school,” he said.

But Oldham shelved those plans when, after receiving a Jefferson Scholarship to the University of Virginia, he crossed paths with an economics professor who performed legal consultations on the side.

That professor, he said, persuaded him to take the governmental track, and Oldham ended up double majoring in the Government and Foreign Affairs honors program.

Retired E.C. Glass teacher Marie Waller, who taught some of Oldham’s history and government classes during his time in high school, said she was always impressed with Oldham’s personality, as well as his scholastic performance.

“He was always on time, he always had his work done and he always had a smile on his face,” she said.

Waller said she always thought Oldham would go into medicine, mainly because of his participation at the Central Virginia Governor’s School for Science and Technology.

But in retrospect, she said, she could see his interest in government, specifically current events.

“He could keep up with anything,” she said.

“He was certainly one of those people that did not just have a narrow view of life. He looked at everything.”

“Even back then,” Oldham said, “I realized that I really enjoyed reading and writing as much as, if not more than, being in a lab with a microscope and Petri dishes.”

After graduating from UVa, Oldham received an opportunity to study at the University of Cambridge. It was there where his goals became more focused and clear.

While completing his master’s degree in philosophy, Oldham said, the charms of academia began to wear off.

“I realized that the notion of spending another six years in the stacks in the library, working on a dissertation that I would be lucky to have 14 people read was not what I really wanted to do,” he said.

He decided what he really wanted to do was attend law school, with the intention of working in the government sector.

Oldham was accepted to attend Harvard University’s Law School. He called that “the three greatest years in my intellectual development.”

After graduating Harvard in 2005, Oldham served as a clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

He also worked for the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice.

But both of those experiences, though remarkable, he said, paled in comparison to his current clerkship for Alito.

“He is a wonderful, wonderful man, and I could not possibly be luckier,” said Oldham.

“If I could do this forever,” he said, “I would do it forever.”

As far as plans for the future, Oldham said, nothing is for certain.

“I have absolutely no idea,” he said.

Waller said whatever Oldham ends up doing, he won’t have any problems.

“I know he’s going to be excellent in anything he tries to do,” she said.

Oldham said he prefers not to look past the next few days.

“To say that I’m looking forward to the coming 10 months would be the understatement of the year.”