The President today nominated Samuel R. Pierce, Jr., of Long Island, N.Y., to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Pierce is a senior partner in the New York City law firm of Battle, Fowler, Jaffin, Pierce & Kheel.

Mr. Pierce was born on September 8, 1922. He received his A.B. in 1947 from Cornell University and his J.D. in 1949 from Cornell Law University. In 1952 Mr. Pierce received an LL.M. in taxation from the New York University School of Law and from 1957 to 1958 did postgraduate study as a Ford Foundation fellow at the Yale Law School. On May 31, 1972, he was awarded an honorary doctor of laws (LL.D.) by New York University.

Admitted to the New York Bar in 1949, he began his law career as an assistant district attorney for New York County, an office he held until 1953. He was then appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1955 he became the Assistant Under Secretary of Labor, then associate counsel and later counsel to the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust of the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Pierce returned to New York City in 1957 where he practiced law and subsequently served as a judge of the Court of General Sessions (now part of the New York Supreme Court) in 1959 and 1960. In 1961 Mr. Pierce became a partner in the law firm of Battle, Fowler, Stokes & Kheel, where he has practiced until the present.

In 1970 Mr. Pierce was appointed General Counsel of the United States Treasury Department, a position he held until 1973. During this period he was also the Executive Director and General Counsel of the Emergency Loan Guarantee Board, a Director of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, General Counsel to the National Advisory Council, and Director of the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity in the Treasury. He is a director of the Prudential Insurance Company of America, General Electric Co., International Paper Co., U.S. Industries, First National Boston Corp., First National Bank of Boston, and a trustee of the Rand Corp. He is also a governor of the American Stock Exchange, chairman of the Impartial Disciplinary Review Board of the New York City Transit System, and the impartial arbitrator of the New York City Transit System.

Mr. Pierce is married to the former Barbara Wright, and they have one daughter, Mrs. Victoria Pierce Ransmeier.