John J. "Jack" McConnell Jr. of South Carolina-based Motley Rice, considered a key architect of the close alliance between the trial bar and the Rhode Island Democratic Party that led up to the state's failed litigation against lead paint companies, has been tagged for a seat on the state's federal district court by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed (both D-R.I.). [Providence Journal via Genova] As I noted eight years ago (see also this update from David Nieporent and this summary from Jim Copland), an investigation by Forbes found that after McConnell opened a Motley branch office in Providence, the firm quickly established itself as Rhode Island's largest political contributor for the 2000 elections, and McConnell himself became treasurer of the state party (and a key donor ever since, including to campaigns of Reed and Whitehouse). Whitehouse (as state AG) then proceeded to hire the Motley firm to conduct the state's much-publicized lawsuit seeking to assign the costs of lead paint cleanup to companies that produced the paint many decades earlier. That suit would have yielded enormous returns (and legal fees) had it succeeded, but in the event proved to be too drastic a stretch of legal principles for the courts to accept. For McConnell, though, at least, if not for many of the others involved, the whole episode seems to have resulted in a happy ending.