James E. Boasberg

James Emanuel "Jeb" Boasberg (born February 20, 1963) is the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He served as the presiding judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 2020 to 2021 and is a former associate judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Early life and education Boasberg was born in San Francisco, California, in 1963, to Sarah Margaret (née Szold) and Emanuel Boasberg III. The family moved to Washington, D.C. when Boasberg's father accepted a position in Sargent Shriver's Office of Economic Opportunity, a Great Society agency responsible for implementing and administering many of Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty programs. After high school, Boasberg attended Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones and graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude. The following year, he received a Master of Studies degree from St Peter's College, Oxford. From 1986 to 1987, Boasberg was a history teacher and women's basketball coach at the Horace Mann School in New York City. He then attended Yale Law School, where he was a classmate of future Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. He graduated in 1990 with a Juris Doctor. Clerkship and legal career After completing law school, Boasberg served as a law clerk for Judge Dorothy Wright Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1990 to 1991. He then went into private practice, working in San Francisco at Keker, Brockett & Van Nest (now Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP) from 1991 to 1994 and then in the District of Columbia at Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick from 1995 to 1996. In 1996, Boasberg joined the office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia where he would spend 5.5 years as a prosecutor, specializing in homicides.