Three years after turnover atop its legal department, Fox Corp. has promoted senior executive Nicholas Trutanich to general counsel.
Adam Ciongoli, the former Campbell Soup executive who joined Fox as chief legal and policy officer in 2023, is not renewing his contract and will step down December 1. He will become a special advisor to Fox through June 2028, the company said Monday.
Trutanich, currently EVP and Principal Deputy General Counsel, will become general counsel, reporting to CEO Lachlan Murdoch. As part of the legal exec change, Fox also said Kristopher Jones, EVP and head of government relations, will now report directly to John Nallen, president and COO of Fox.
In 2023, after the company had agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit over election fraud claims aired by Fox News, chief counsel Viet Dinh exited Fox. Dinh had come aboard the company in 2018, playing a key strategic role as it started a new chapter after Disney acquired most of former parent 21st Century Fox.
A big project for Trutanich will be shepherding Fox’s acquisition of Roku, a transformative $22 billion deal proposed last June.
Trutanich joined Fox as chief ethics & compliance officer in 2021 and rose to his current deputy post, where he has led the company’s litigation and ethics & compliance functions. Prior to his current position, Trutanich was U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada from 2019-2021, held senior roles at the Nevada Attorney General’s Office, and was federal prosecutor within the U.S. Department of Justice.
“I’d like to thank Adam for his many immense contributions over the last three years,” Murdoch said in a statement. Trutanich, he went on to say, has “deep legal, litigation and compliance experience” and has been “a critical member of the Fox team since joining the company.”
Trutanich said it is “an exciting time of growth and innovation at Fox, and I look forward to working with colleagues across the company to advance our goals.”