Frank Keating - Federal Career

Federal Career

Keating’s law enforcement career and prominence in the Oklahoma Republican Party prompted newly elected President of the United States Ronald Reagan to appoint Keating as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Keating served as the US Attorney from 1981 until 1984, serving for part of that time as chairman of all US Attorneys. He gave up that post in 1984 to run for Congress in Oklahoma's 1st congressional district and nearly defeated House Budget Committee chairman Jim Jones, holding him to only 52 percent of the vote as Reagan handily carried the district in his 49-state landslide.

Shortly after Reagan was sworn in for his second term, he appointed Keating to serve as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and later elevated him to United States Associate Attorney General, the third ranking official within the United States Department of Justice. These appointments made Keating the highest ranking Oklahoman during the Reagan administration. In his positions as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and Associate Attorney General, Keating oversaw both the Justice and Treasury departments’ law enforcement agencies. These included the United States Customs Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States Marshals service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, all 94 United States Attorneys, the United States role in Interpol and the United States Secret Service.

Following the election of George H.W. Bush as President in 1988, Keating continued to serve in the Justice Department in his role as Associate Attorney General. President Bush elevated Keating in 1990 to General Counsel and Acting Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, that Department’s second highest office, under Secretary Jack Kemp. He would serve as the Deputy Secretary until 1993. As with the case of the Reagan administration, Keating became the highest ranking Oklahoman in the federal government under Bush.

On November 14, 1991, Bush nominated Keating to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, but with Democrats controlling the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Keating's nomination languished, and no hearing was held before Bush's presidency ended. President Bill Clinton chose not to renominate Keating to the seat.

After over a decade of service to the federal government, Keating returned home to Oklahoma.