RICHMOND, Va. (AP) 5 minutes ago -- Judge J. Michael Luttig has resigned from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to accept a job as senior vice president and general counsel for Boeing Co.

Luttig, 51, a conservative judge, had been mentioned last year as a possible nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

He was appointed to the 4th Circuit by former President Bush in 1991, becoming the youngest federal appeals court judge in the country. The Richmond-based appeals court is widely viewed as the most conservative in the nation.

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 337 F.3d 335 (2003) (available here). In his dissent from the court's denial of rehearing en banc, Judge Luttig suggested that on rehearing he would have agreed with the government's position that the role of a court in a habeas proceeding is to "confirm that there is a factual basis supporting the military's determination that a detainee is indeed an enemy combatant." This stance is more deferential to executive power than the rule ultimately adopted by the Supreme Court, which held that a combatant be given a "meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decisionmaker."

WASHINGTON (CNN) August 22, 2001 -- It has been during his time on the 4th Circuit bench that Luttig has developed his reputation, staking out some of the most controversial opinions from that bench in recent years.

Two years ago, he wrote an opinion striking down the Violence Against Women Act on the grounds that Congress had overstepped its authority in establishing the legislation. In 1998, he reversed a lower court ruling and upheld a Virginia ban on partial birth abortion. A year earlier he issued a ruling allowing the state to require parental notification before a teen-ager could obtain an abortion.

Luttig was a supporter of capital punishment long before Beazley and two accomplices in the carjacking -- brothers Donald and Cedric Coleman -- killed his father and wounded his mother in the driveway of their home in Texas.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and David Souter recused themselves from a petition to review Beazley's case because of their ties to Luttig. That led to an unusual 3-3 Supreme Court tie, which was not enough to stay his execution.