James A. Baker

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Federal Bureau of Investigation

General Counsel

Jim Baker has been General Counsel for the FBI since January 2014.  In that role, Jim supervises the FBI’s  lawyers located in Washington, DC and at field offices in the United States and overseas.  He is responsibilities include legal issues in intelligence-gathering operations and programs, criminal and national security investigations and prosecutions, and legal policy, proposed legislation and legal challenges to FBI policies, practices and procedures.  After a clerkship, in 1990, Jim joined the Fraud Section of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division through the Attorney General’s Honors Program.  In 1996, Jim joined—and then ater led—the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review—the office that prepared applications for FISA orders and coordinated DOJ’s national security policy regarding intelligence and counterintelligence matters.  From 2006 to 2009, Jim was a lecturer at Harvard Law School and then assistant general counsel for national security at Verizon Business.  Jim returned to DOJ in 2009 to serve as an Associate Deputy Attorney General responsible for national security and cybersecurity issues. In 2006, Jim received the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in counterterrorism—the CIA’s highest counterterrorism award. A year later, he received the NSA’s Intelligence Under Law Award; the NSA Director’s Distinguished Service Medal; and DOJ’s highest award— the Edmund J. Randolph Award.