Jay Apperson

Jay Apperson teaches National Security Law and US Foreign Relations Law. He is a twenty-year veteran of the United States Department of Justice with extensive litigation and prosecution experience at both the trial and appellate level, including eight years as a Senior Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) for the District of Columbia in the appellate division and ten years as an AUSA and Senior Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia where he successfully prosecuted complex international narcotics-trafficking, organized-crime, money-laundering, and financial-transaction cases, served as International and National Security Coordinator, and was appointed by the United States District Court as a Commissioner to oversee the collection and transmission of evidence on behalf of foreign countries in international terrorism investigations. He further served as Associate, and later, Deputy Independent Counsel under the Honorable Ken Starr and oversaw successful investigations and prosecutions in nationally-significant public-corruption cases.

Mr. Apperson was Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security from 2001 to 2005 and oversaw all federal law-enforcement and counter-terrorism matters as well as the negotiation and passage of significant legislation, including the USA PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act, and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. He later served as Chief Counsel to United States Senator Saxby Chambliss and was specially designated to the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee during its consideration and passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. From 2008 to 2009, he represented the United States in litigation arising from the habeas petitions by persons held as unlawful enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Mr. Apperson is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Rule of Law at the United States Military Academy at West Point and previously served as a full-time Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Law Department at West Point where he taught National Security Law and Constitutional and Military Law during the 2011-2012 academic year. He regularly serves as guest lecturer in these and other subjects at West Point.

Mr. Apperson holds an LLM in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University and has studied terrorism and international security at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Cambridge (UK). He was awarded the Master Teacher Certificate from the West Point Center for Faculty Excellence in 2013, following a two-year course in developmental study, research, and writing to advance classroom teaching excellence.