Assembly interviews 2 candidates to end impasse on regulatory judgeships

Towell and Bagot became the finalists after legislative leaders winnowed an initial field of 23 candidates to fill two seats on the SCC, which regulates some of Virginia’s most vital industries – energy, banking and investment, and insurance.

They will appear on Tuesday afternoon at a joint meeting of the Senate Commerce and Labor and the House Labor and Commerce committees, which will interview them for an expected vote by the House of Delegates and Senate on Wednesday.

The SCC, created as a constitutionally independent body in 1902 to regulate some of the biggest businesses in Virginia, has been operating without a full panel of judges since early 2022.

The commission oversees regulation of public utilities, such as electric and natural gas companies, banks and financial services, and insurance companies. It runs Virginia’s new health insurance marketplace to administer the Affordable Care Act and registers all corporate and other entities doing business in the state.

The elections would end a long political stalemate that began six years ago and continues to roil an institution created in 1903 as a constitutionally independent body, but which remains dependent on the legislature to elect its members and pass the laws that it must administer.

They would join Jehmal Hudson, a former FERC official elected in 2020 and the lone member of the three-judge panel since Judge Judy Jagdmann resigned at the end of 2022, in part to give a politically divided assembly the opportunity to reach a compromise to fill two vacancies instead of one. Earlier that year, the newly elected Republican-controlled House refused to re-elect Angela Navarro, whom Democrats had selected for the panel the previous year when they still controlled both chambers.

However, the political infighting over the SCC dates to 2018, when Republicans who then controlled both chambers couldn’t agree on a replacement for Judge Jimmy Dimitri after he retired early that year. The next year, they chose Patricia West, a former Virginia Beach circuit court judge and longtime Republican appointee, but Democrats retaliated after winning control of the assembly by replacing her with Hudson in 2020. They elected Navarro, a deputy secretary of natural resources under then-Gov. Ralph Northam, in 2021 to succeed Judge Mark Christie, who was appointed to FERC, but she failed to win re-election a year later.

Since then, the Democratic-controlled Senate and Republican-controlled House failed to elect replacements in two consecutive assembly sessions and two special legislative sessions. In November, Democrats won narrow majorities in both chambers, giving them the opportunity to elect both judges.

Towell has been mentioned as a potential SCC candidate before. He served as deputy attorney general for litigation for almost five years under then-Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat. Previously, Towell had served as deputy secretary of agriculture and forestry under then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe. He also works as a litigation attorney at McGuireWoods law firm in Richmond and as a law clerk for Judge Barbara Milano Keenan at the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Bagot, who lives in Loudoun County, works as senior regulatory attorney at NextEra Energy, based in Florida, the third-largest electric utility company in the United States. Previously, he served as legal counsel at FERC to Christie, who had served on the SCC for almost 17 years. Bagot also served two previous stints at FERC – as trial staff counsel and as legal intern – as well as two law firms in Washington, D.C. – Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders and Van Ness Feldman.