After long delay, Va. lawmakers appoint two SCC judges

The Virginia General Assembly unanimously elected two attorneys to fill two vacancies on the Virginia State Corporation Commission on Wednesday, after more than a year of understaffing and partisan battles.

State senators and delegates voted 40-0 and 98-0, respectively, to approve the nominations of Kelsey Bagot, a former legal adviser with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who lives in Loudoun County, and Sam Towell, a former deputy attorney general who is now associate general counsel for litigation for Smithfield Foods and resides in Richmond.

The SCC governs utilities, state-chartered financial institutions, securities, insurance, retail franchising and the Virginia Health Benefit Exchange. Its three-judge panel has been short two judges since the December 2022 resignation of Judge Judith Jagdmann, and nominations have been held up by partisan politics.

Angela Navarro, the state’s former deputy secretary of commerce and trade, was appointed as a judge in January 2021, replacing Mark Christie, the former SCC chairman, who was appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2020. However, Navarro left office in March 2022 after Republican state legislators declined to elect her to a full term, and the split General Assembly was unable to come to an agreement on a replacement for Navarro in 2022.

SCC judges are named by state legislators or, if they can’t agree on a candidate, the governor can name a commissioner on a temporary basis, although the state Senate and House of Delegates must elect a judge to a six-year term.

Bagot’s six-year term will start April 1, and Towell’s term will begin March 17 and end Jan. 31, 2028, as he would replace Jagdmann, who left in the fourth year of her third term.

Since January 2023, Judge Jehmal T. Hudson has been the only sitting Virginia SCC commissioner. He is in his first six-year term on the commission.

Backed by Democrats who hold control of the House and Senate labor and commerce committees, Bagot is currently employed as a senior attorney at NextEra Energy, a Florida-based renewable energy company focused on solar energy generation, and Towell was previously deputy attorney general for civil litigation under former state Attorney Gen. Mark Herring.

A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, Towell was also deputy secretary of agriculture and forestry under Gov. Terry McAuliffe and was a litigation attorney at McGuireWoods. Bagot, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was a trial attorney at FERC and a legal adviser to Christie during his recent term as a FERC commissioner. She also was an associate at Troutman Sanders.