James Burnham, '09: Appointed Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Counsel to the President

James Burnham serves as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Counsel to the President. Most recently, Mr. Burnham served as an associate at Jones Day, where he primarily handled litigation against the Federal Government. In particular, Mr. Burnham successfully represented former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell in McDonnell v. United States (a major challenge to the scope of the Federal corruption laws) and the Noel Canning Corporation in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning (a major constitutional challenge to several recess appointments by President Obama). Mr. Burnham has also served as a lecturer-in-law at the University of Chicago Law School, and, earlier in his career, as a Law Clerk to Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review.