There had been much speculation in recent weeks about who the new president of The Catholic University of America was going to be. Today, it was announced that the new president will be Boston College Law School Dean John Garvey. His appointment will be effective July 1, 2010. He is the third lay president of CUA.

According to a press release from CUA, Garvey is a nationally renowned constitutional law expert.

“We were looking for a person who not only is committed to the vision of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and can articulate it persuasively, but also can lead The Catholic University of America in achieving this ambitious goal,” said Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, chairman of the CUA Board of Trustees and the CUA Presidential Search Committee. Archbishop Vigneron described Garvey as “a man of strong Catholic faith with rich experience and a proven record as a scolar and a leader in higher education.”

The appointment of Garvey, past president of the Association of American Law Schools, brings to a close the university’s nine-month search for a new leader to replace Bishop O’Connell, who announced last October that he would be stepping down and who earlier this month was named coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Trenton.

“For more than a decade I have been the dean of Boston College Law School, an institution I have loved and been honored to serve,” said Garvey. “I can think of no other job I would have left BC for. But I have been committed for much of my life to advancing the cause of Catholic higher education, and there is no better place to do that than at The Catholic University of America. I hope during my term as president to continue the work Bishop O’Connell has done to build the quality of its academic programs, both graduate and undergraduate, and the endowment necessary to support them.”

Prior to his appointment as Boston College Law School dean, Garvey served as a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School from 1994 to 1999; as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan Law School from 1985 to 1986; and as a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law from 1976 to 1994.

He served as assistant to the solicitor general at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1981 to 1984; as an associate at Morrison & Foerster, in San Francisco, from 1975 to 1976; and as a law clerk to Irving R. Kaufman, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, from 1974 to 1975.