Scott A. de la Vega

Ethics Counsel, U.S. Office of Government Ethics

Scott de la Vega is an attorney with over three decades of leadership excellence in law and government operations. A member of the federal government’s career Senior Executive Service (SES), he has held numerous non-partisan, legal and operational senior positions across multiple administrations. He has served as Director of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Departmental Ethics Office, the Department’s Designated Agency Ethics Official, Associate Solicitor for General Law and Acting Secretary of the Interior. He has also served as General Counsel for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Ethics Counsel to the Vice President, supervisory Ethics Counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office and as Managing Counsel for Operations in the Office of Administration for the Executive Office of the President. While in these roles, he also served as DOI’s Director of Presidential Transition and as a government representative to the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). In these roles, he has overseen the financial disclosure clearance process for White House and Cabinet officials; directly counseled senior White House staff, Cabinet officials, and nominees seeking Senate confirmation; and helped to manage conflicts of interest and formulate ethics law and policy across the Executive Branch.

Mr. de la Vega previously served in senior ethics and legal positions at other federal agencies, including the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In the private sector, he has been a senior ethics and compliance counsel for various corporations in the financial services industry. He was a commissioned officer and served as both a trial and appellate criminal litigator and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps where he concluded his active-duty service as the U.S. Supreme Court Coordinator for the Defense Appellate Division. He earned a B.A. from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, SUNY and a J.D. from the Syracuse University College of Law.