Fed Prosecutor Will Be Kenney’s City Solicitor

Photo by Jeff Fusco

A federal prosecutor with a history of involvement in city politics will be the City Solicitor under Mayor-elect Jim Kenney: Sozi Pedro Tulante will be announced for the position at a press conference later today in City Hall.

Tulante has a diverse professional background — he’s spent the last five years as a federal prosecutor, but before that was in private practice at Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, working on commercial litigation and high-profile pro bono matters, including representing a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also lectures at Penn Law.

He earned his undergrad and law degrees at Harvard.

Tulante was born in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, emigrating to Philadelphia with his family when he was 8. “We lived in parts of North Philadelphia that had suffered the twin scourges of a raging crack-cocaine epidemic and senseless gangbanging,” he said in an essay published this year. “I often went to bed overwhelmed by hunger, even though my parents had swallowed their pride and reluctantly accepted welfare.”

This isn’t Tulante’s first go-round at City Hall: He was on Mayor Nutter’s 2007 transition team for the Philadelphia Law Department.