Jeh Johnson
Encyclopedia
Jeh Charles Johnson is an American civil and criminal trial lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

, currently serving as General Counsel of the Department of Defense
General Counsel of the Department of Defense
The General Counsel of the Department of Defense serves as the chief legal officer of the Department of Defense , advising both the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on all legal matters and services, and providing legal advice to OSD organizations and, as appropriate, other DOD components...

. Johnson is a graduate of Morehouse College
Morehouse College
Morehouse College is a private, all-male, liberal arts, historically black college located in Atlanta, Georgia. Along with Hampden-Sydney College and Wabash College, Morehouse is one of three remaining traditional men's colleges in the United States....

 and Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...

, and is grandson of noted sociologist and Fisk University
Fisk University
Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...

 president Dr. Charles S. Johnson
Charles S. Johnson
Charles Spurgeon Johnson was an American sociologist, first black president of historically black Fisk University, and a lifelong advocate for racial equality and the advancement of civil rights for African Americans and all other ethnic minorities...

.

Johnson’s first name is taken from a Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...

n chief who reportedly saved his grandfather’s life while Dr. Johnson was on a League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...

 mission to Liberia in 1930.

Career

Johnson served as Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1989-1991. From 1998-2001 he was General Counsel
General Counsel
A general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation or government department. The term is most used in the United States...

 of the Department of the Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...

 under President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

. Prior to his appointment as General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Johnson was a partner at the New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and was the first African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 to be elected to that firm’s partnership. He was elected a fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers
American College of Trial Lawyers
The American College of Trial Lawyers is a professional association of trial lawyers from the United States and Canada. Founded in 1950, the College is dedicated to maintaining and improving the standards of trial practice, the administration of justice and the ethics of the profession...

 in 2004. In June 2008, Johnson was named to The National Law Journal
The National Law Journal
The National Law Journal, a U.S. periodical founded in 1978, reports legal information of national importance to attorneys, including federal circuit court decisions, verdicts, practitioners' columns, coverage of legislative issues and legal news for the business and private sectors.The...

's list of the "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America."

On January 8, 2009, he was named by President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 to be General Counsel for the Defense Department
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

.

Federal prosecutor

Johnson began his legal career at Paul, Weiss in the mid-1980s. In 1989 he left to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney
United States Attorney
United States Attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys stationed throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands...

 in the Southern District of New York, a position which he held until 1991. While serving as United States Attorney, Johnson prosecuted public corruption cases.

Air Force General Counsel

Johnson returned to Paul, Weiss in 1992 and was elected partner at the firm in 1994. In 1998, Johnson was appointed General Counsel of the Air Force
Air force
An air force, also known in some countries as an air army, is in the broadest sense, the national military organization that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army, navy or...

 by President Bill Clinton after confirmation by the U.S. Senate. As General Counsel, Johnson was the senior legal official in the Air Force and Governor of Wake Island
Wake Island
Wake Island is a coral atoll having a coastline of in the North Pacific Ocean, located about two-thirds of the way from Honolulu west to Guam east. It is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States, administered by the Office of Insular Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior...

, in the Pacific Ocean. His tenure coincided with Operation Allied Force
Operation Allied Force
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was NATO's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999...

 in 1999. He was awarded the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service
Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service
The Department of the Air Force Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service is the highest award granted by the United States Secretary of the Air Force to civilian personnel. It consists of a medal, lapel button, and citation certificate...

 for his efforts.

Private practice

After his service in the Clinton administration, Johnson returned to Paul, Weiss in 2002, where he was an active trial lawyer of large commercial cases.

Johnson was a member of the Executive Committee of the New York City Bar Association. From 2001 to 2004, he served as chairman of the City Bar’s Judiciary Committee, which rates and approves all federal, state and local judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...

s in New York City.
In 2007, Johnson was nominated by the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination to be Chief Judge
Chief judge
Chief Judge is a title that can refer to the highest-ranking judge of a court that has more than one judge. The meaning and usage of the term vary from one court system to another...

 of New York though the incumbent, Judith Kaye
Judith Kaye
Judith S. Kaye is a retired New York judge who served as Chief Judge of New York from March 23, 1993 until December 31, 2008. She was the first woman to occupy the State Judiciary's highest office.-Early life and education:...

, was ultimately reappointed by former Governor Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer
Eliot Laurence Spitzer is an American lawyer, former Democratic Party politician, and political commentator. He was the co-host of In the Arena, a talk-show and punditry forum broadcast on CNN until CNN cancelled his show in July of 2011...

.

Democratic Party involvement

Johnson is active in Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 politics, as a fundraiser and adviser to presidential campaigns. Johnson served as special counsel to John Kerry
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...

's 2004 presidential campaign, and was active in Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's presidential campaign as a foreign policy adviser and as a member of his national finance committee.

General Counsel of the Department of Defense

On January 8, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama announced Johnson's nomination as Department of Defense General Counsel. On February 9, 2009, he was confirmed by the Senate. http://senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/one_item_and_teasers/nom_confc.htm

As General Counsel of the Defense Department, Johnson has been a major player in certain key priorities of the Obama Administration. In 2009, Johnson was heavily involved in the reform of military commissions, and testified before Congress numerous times in support of the Military Commissions Act of 2009. In February 2010, the Secretary of Defense appointed Johnson to co-chair a working group, along with Army General Carter Ham, to study the potential impact of a repeal of the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law. In November 2010, following an extensive study, Johnson and General Ham reported that the risk to overall military effectiveness of a repeal would be low. The report was hailed as a thorough and objective analysis. The Washington Post editorial page wrote:
“The report is remarkable not just for its conclusions but for its honest, thorough and respectful handling of a delicate subject. It offers a clear-eyed, careful, conservative approach to implementing policy change. It doesn’t play down the hurdles or denigrate the opposition. It is, in short, a document to be taken seriously, especially by those who may have lingering doubts about allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.”



On February 24, 2010, Fox News reported that the legal counsel of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other Guantanamo captives who had faced charges in a Guantanamo military commission
Guantanamo military commission
The Guantanamo military commissions are military tribunals created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 for prosecuting detainees held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps.- History :...

 had arrived in Guantanamo, only to be told that they would not be allowed to visit their clients without advance permission from Pentagon General Counsel "Jay Johnson" .

In August, 2010, Johnson was part of the public dialogue over the Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

 release of classified
Classified information in the United States
The United States government classification system is currently established under Executive Order 13526, the latest in a long series of executive orders on the topic. Issued by President Barack Obama in 2009, Executive Order 13526 replaced earlier executive orders on the topic and modified the...

 Pentagon documents known as the Afghan War Diary or The War Logs. “The Department of Defense will not negotiate some ‘minimized’ or ‘sanitized’ version of a release by WikiLeaks of additional U.S. government classified documents,” he wrote in a letter to Timothy J. Matusheski, a lawyer representing the online whistle-blowing organization pro bono
Pro bono
Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and strategy consulting firms...

. The possibility of direct, official contact between the lawyers and/or their organization/client was being discussed, reported The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, one of the media outlets which had earlier published parts of the Diary.

In January 2011, Johnson provoked controversy when, according to a Department of Defense news story, he supposedly asserted in a speech at the Pentagon that deceased civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. would have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite King's outspoken opposition to American interventionism during his lifetime. Other public commentary about the speech noted that Johnson never made such a claim in his remarks.

In a February 2011 speech to the New York City Bar Association, Johnson "acknowledged the concerns raised" about the detention of alleged WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

 source Private Bradley Manning and "stated that he had personally traveled to Quantico
Marine Corps Base Quantico
Marine Corps Base Quantico, sometimes abbreviated MCB Quantico, is a major United States Marine Corps training base located near Triangle, Virginia, covering nearly in southern Prince William County, northern Stafford County, and southeastern Fauquier County...

 to conduct an investigation." Human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 attorney and journalist Scott Horton wrote that "Johnson was remarkably unforthcoming about what he discovered and what conclusions he drew from his visit."

External links

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