  We develop a formalism where the hard and soft pomeron contributions to high
energy scattering arise as leading Regge poles of a single kernel in
holographic QCD. The kernel is obtained using effective field theory inspired
by Regge theory of a 5-d string theory. It describes the exchange of higher
spin fields in the graviton Regge trajectory that are dual to glueball states
of twist two. For a specific holographic QCD model we describe Deep Inelastic
Scattering in the Regge limit of low Bjorken x, finding good agreement with
experimental data from HERA. The observed rise of the effective pomeron
intercept, as the size of the probe decreases, is reproduced by considering the
first four pomeron trajectories. In the case of soft probes, relevant to total
cross sections, the leading hard pomeron trajectory is suppressed, such that in
this kinematical region we reproduce an intercept of 1.09 compatible with the
QCD soft pomeron data. In the spectral region of positive Maldelstam variable t
the first two pomeron trajectories are consistent with current expectations for
the glueball spectrum from lattice simulations.
