A review of records by a law professor at found that not only did lawyers at federal agencies contribute more to Barack Obama than Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election but that every single federal agency reported an overwhelming advantage to Obama.

The analysis also showed that two federal agencies — the and the – did not report a single dollar in contributions to Romney from its lawyers.

“This is to be expected to some extent when you have a Democrat in the White House,” said , associate professor of law at Pepperdine, “but I’ve never seen numbers this lopsided, outside of a politicized organization.”

Here is what Anderson found while looking at FEC records for the 2012 election cycle at the contributions from government attorneys at every federal agency plus the United Nations and , the independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States:

Anderson said he came across the numbers as part of a larger research project at Pepperdine looking into contributions by law firms.

“I noticed the government agencies were fairly lopsided,” Anderson told in a telephone interview, and that spurred him to look at the FEC data for Obama or Romney by agency.

Some critics have dismissed Anderson’s numbers, maintaining that since Republicans have long talked about reducing the size of government, there’s a large degree of self-selection at work here — that lawyers who are politically conservative wouldn’t likely seek jobs in the federal government in the first place.

Anderson acknowledged that attorneys tend to donate more to Democrats and the public employees also contribute much more to Democrats than Republicans but said “in the current dismal market” for lawyers, the numbers would not like lead to such a one-sided outcome.

But even if self-selection is at work, “It’s still a problem,” Anderson said.

“You have a monolithic, ideological culture, judging from the data” and Anderson thinks that could lead to more controversies such as the allegations facing the for singling out conservative political organizations for scrutiny.

Anderson’s numbers showed that 95 percent of lawyers at the IRS contributed to Obama in the 2012 election.

“Dissenting voices within agencies — at least loud ones — don’t seem to he heard here … and may not be willing to stand up at a given agency to give voice to the other side of the political spectrum,” Anderson said.

Anderson, who has worked at Pepperdine for six years and says he’s a registered Republican, says he has not yet looked at the FEC numbers from previous presidential election years.

“This is a snapshot,” he said.

Here’s the original blog post by Prof. Anderson:

Contact Rob Nikolewski at and follow him on Twitter @robnikolewski