June 24 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, the Bush administration's chief courtroom lawyer, will step down in July and return to private practice, the Justice Department said.

Olson, who represents the administration in cases before the Supreme Court, was appointed in 2001 after President George W. Bush took office. Olson had successfully represented Bush in the Supreme Court case in 2000 that halted ballot counting in Florida and sealed Bush's election over Democrat Al Gore. His departure next month will coincide with the close of the Supreme Court's current term.

Olson participated in 26 arguments before the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said. Of 23 that have been decided, the government won 20.

``Ted Olson is not only one of the most accomplished lawyers to ever hold the office of solicitor general, he is among the finest individuals it has been my privilege to know,'' Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a statement.

Wife Killed in Attack

Olson, 63, said in a letter to Bush that his work as solicitor general ``has been exciting, inspiring and, at times, breathtaking.''

Olson's wife, legal commentator Barbara Olson, was killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She was on the hijacked airplane that crashed into the Pentagon. Before the crash, she called her husband on her cellular phone.

``I have huge emotions for the people who are suffering in the same way that I am,'' he said in an NBC television interview after the attacks.

The subsequent war on terrorism affected Olson's professional life as well. During oral arguments before the Supreme Court on April 20, Olson defended the Bush administration's decision to hold foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba without a court hearing.

The U.S. is ``at war'' and is acting in response to an ``unusual and extraordinary threat to our national security,'' Olson told the justices. The court hasn't announced a decision in the case.

`Strong and Resolute'

In a statement today thanking Bush and Ashcroft, Olson said the struggle against terrorism ``will be long and arduous, but you have been strong and resolute in setting the nation on the right, and vitally necessary, path.''

Bush, a Republican, nominated Olson to be the nation's 42nd solicitor general on Feb. 14, 2001. The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked on his nomination, 9-9, with Democrats saying he hadn't been candid about his involvement in a magazine's efforts to dig up damaging material on then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

The full Senate voted to confirm Olson, 51-47.

Once in office, Olson adopted the traditional role of the solicitor general by defending federal statutes and rules, regardless of the administration's policy preferences.

In 2001, the administration split with groups opposing racial preferences when it decided to defend an affirmative action program designed to direct more federal highway dollars to companies owned by minorities.

Racial Preferences

The following year, Olson urged the White House to take a stand against racial preferences in university admissions in a pair of Supreme Court cases involving the University of Michigan. Bush refused to go that far, decrying the Michigan admissions policies as ``quotas'' but refusing to categorically rule out race-based admissions.

In the court's current term, which may end as soon as next week, Olson defended the constitutionality of a federal campaign- finance overhaul and urged the court not to bar public school teachers from leading recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance with the phrase ``under God.''

In his first stint at the U.S. Justice Department, Olson worked as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel from 1981 to 1984 in the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

To contact the reporters on this story: Laurence Arnold in Washington larnold4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 24, 2004 18:33 EDT