Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) will put a hold on the nomination of Jim Williams to be administrator  of the General Services Administration if the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approves Williams' nomination tomorrow, a spokeswoman for Grassley confirmed today.

"At this point, if Mr. Williams is passed out of committee, Senator Grassley plans to put a hold on the nomination," said Beth Pellett Levine, Grassley's spokeswoman.

Earlier, Grassley had opposed Williams' nomination, saying July 24 that his "concerns are based on my investigation of a dubious GSA contract with Sun Microsystems.”

“In a nutshell, all the evidence developed in my oversight investigation appears to indicate that top-level GSA management, including [former] Administrator [Lurita] Doan and [Federal Acquisition Service] Commissioner Williams, may have improperly interfered in the ongoing contract negotiations with Sun Microsystems in May to September 2006,” Grassley said.

Grassley said Doan and Williams pressured a GSA contracting officer to approve a new Sun contract, even though they both knew GSA's inspector general had detected alleged fraud and had referred the matter to the Justice Department.

“As FAS commissioner, he was the top GSA official responsible for making the tough calls, and he chose not to protect the taxpayers,” Grassley said. “He made the wrong choice. He is now accountable for that decision.” Because of that choice, Grassley said, Williams should not be GSA administrator.

The Senate committee is scheduled to  consider the Williams nomination July 30.

At his confirmation hearing, Williams told the committee that he did not pressure the contracting officer. Williams said he would not tell contracting officers to accept an agreement that they didn’t consider to be in the best interest of the government. Williams also said he made it clear at a 2006 briefing that GSA should walk away from negotiations with Sun if the contracting officer could not get a good deal for the government.