Mr. Kris most recently served as assistant attorney general for national security, the Presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, responsible for supervising the enforcement of all federal criminal laws related to the national counterterrorism and counterespionage programs, and for providing legal oversight of intelligence activities conducted by executive branch agencies. Prior to that, he was deputy general counsel and chief ethics and compliance officer at Time Warner Inc., as well as adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Kris began his career with the United States Department of Justice in 1992 through its Honors Program, serving first as an attorney in the criminal division and then as associate deputy attorney general.
Mr. Kris is the author or co-author of several works on national security law, including the treatise National Security Investigations and Prosecutions (Thomson-West 2007). He has testified numerous times before Congress, and been a speaker or panelist at events sponsored by various organizations including several law schools, the JFK School of Government at Harvard University, the American Bar Association, and the RAND Corporation.
Mr. Kris received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Haverford College and is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He is a former law clerk to Judge Stephen Trott of the Ninth Circuit.
In January 2011, Congress enacted legislation prohibiting the use offederal funds to transfer to the United States any individuals currentlydetained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Among the purposes of thisprovision, observers commented, was to prevent the prosecution of thesedetainees in federal court in the United States.
