Obama picks Murphy for key Army job
WASHINGTON - President Obama has nominated former Rep. Patrick Murphy of Bucks County to become undersecretary of the Army, the branch's second-highest ranking civilian position, the White House announced Wednesday.
WASHINGTON - President Obama has nominated former Rep. Patrick Murphy of Bucks County to become undersecretary of the Army, the branch's second-highest ranking civilian position, the White House announced Wednesday.
Murphy, a Bucks County Democrat who represented the Eighth District from 2007 to 2011, was the first veteran of the second Iraq War to be elected to Congress, where he sat on the Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Trained as a paratrooper with the Army's 82d Airborne Division, Murphy spent seven months in Iraq, starting in 2003, where he served as a convoy commander and lawyer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. He earned a Bronze Star for service. He also was deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2002.
Murphy, 41, is a partner at the Philadelphia law firm Fox Rothschild and is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
By tradition, nominees are barred from talking to news media.
@JonathanTamari