After being nominated by President Obama in July to the U.S. Court of Appeals, visiting law professor Victoria Nourse will now join the White House as counsel to Vice President Joe Biden.

“I am delighted to serve my country and the vice president,” Nourse wrote in an email.

Nourse is known for her writings on constitutional history, legislation, separation of powers and criminal law.

“Victoria Nourse is a superb scholar, and she is also someone who has made great contributions as a public servant,” Georgetown Law Dean William M. Treanor said in a statement. “She is extraordinarily well-equipped to serve in this important role as the vice president’s chief lawyer.”

Nourse graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in 1980 and earned her law degree from University of California’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 1984, graduating Order of the Coif.  She clerked for Judge Edward Weinfeld of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York City, before working as a litigation associate at the New York Office of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison from 1985 to 1987.

In 1987 she joined the Senate Committee to Investigate at the Iran-Contra Affair as an assistant counselor. She represented federal agencies in the U.S. Court of Appeals as a member of the Civil Appellate Staff of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1988, and then in 1990, she joined the Special Counsel to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as chief lawyer handling crime and drug laws. She later served as senior advisor to then-Senator Biden, helping him draft the Violence Against Women Act, a component of the Biden-Hatch Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

In 1993, she became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Law in Madison, where she is still a member of the faculty. In 2008, she was named a LQC Lamar Professor at Emory School of Law.  She has worked as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, Yale Law School, New York University School of Law and the Georgetown University Law Center.