What was Garland’s role in the case, how did it affect him, and does it offer any window into how a Justice Garland might approach the law?

At the time, Garland was principal associate deputy attorney general, a top aide to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. When the bombing happened, Janet Reno’s Justice Department quickly took command of the case, sending Garland and Gorelick to Oklahoma, as Obama noted Wednesday. Garland was on the ground on April 21, two days after the bombing. “He not only volunteered,” Gorelick told The New York Times in 2010, “he basically said, ‘You need to let me go.’” Charlie Savage wrote:

Former colleagues also recalled that Mr. Garland insisted on doing the investigation by the book, like obtaining subpoenas even when phone and truck rental companies volunteered to simply hand over evidence, to avoid any future trial problems. He also made sure there was a prosecutor responsible for keeping victims and relatives informed about the case as it developed.

But Garland’s direct work on the case was short-lived. Later that spring, he returned to Washington, D.C., to take on a supervisory role on criminal cases, including Oklahoma City. He was replaced as lead prosecutor by Joseph Hartzler. According to the Times, Gorelick rejected Garland’s request to directly try the case. Hartzler told Savage that Garland had not micromanaged him.

“I used him as a sounding board,” he said. “He didn’t tell me what to do, and he never made me feel as though I needed to consult him before making a decision. But I often consulted him because he gave such good advice.”

Stephen Jones was the lead lawyer for McVeigh in the case. When I reached Jones on Wednesday, the first thing he told me was that he was “a partisan Republican. I’ve been a Republican since I was 12 years old.” (Jones was the GOP nominee for Senate in Oklahoma in 1990, but lost.) Then he proceeded to praise his former opposing counsel at length.

“I agreed with everything the president said about Judge Garland,” Jones said, adding that he was encouraging the Sooner State’s two Republican senators to back Garland. “Personally he’s above reproach. He has integrity. He has the skills.”

He remembered Garland as a responsive, humble, and meticulous prosecutor in the Oklahoma City case. “He certainly returned every phone call,” Jones said. “If he said he was going to get back in touch that afternoon, you could rest assured that by 5 o’clock he did that.” He said Garland would dial Jones directly and gave him his cell phone, rather than working through secretaries—a level of courtesy to be hoped for but not always met in officials at his level.

The government’s approach to the case, under Garland’s direction, was fair, Jones said, though he added, “I think some of the decisions made later on boiled down to a pragmatic approach” not to pursue other accomplices. Jones said he was most impressed by the efforts Garland made to meet his request for a private meeting with Attorney General Reno to discuss whether the government would seek the death penalty. “I was pleasantly surprised and pleased that Merrick was willing to arrange it,” he recalled. (The meeting was ultimately canceled after McVeigh withdrew authorization to hold it.)