WilmerHale partner Stephen Preston, among the country’s foremost legal practitioners in the national security space, was named chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, effective August 9, 2023.

Preston, chair of WilmerHale’s Defense, National Security and Government Contracts Practice Group, has held several senior-level positions at the Pentagon and in the Intelligence Community. From 2009 to 2015, he served first as general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency and then in the same role at the Department of Defense, making him the first person to hold both of those Senate-confirmed positions. He was later appointed to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

During his six years in the Obama Administration, Preston played a leading role in ensuring that the nation’s intelligence activities and military operations fully complied with US and international law. He was a key legal advisor on many of the nation’s most challenging and consequential national security endeavors, including the operation against Osama bin Laden in 2011.

At WilmerHale, Preston’s practice includes investigations, litigation, federal procurement, civil fraud, foreign investment in the United States, cybersecurity, strategic counseling, and crisis management. He has written and spoken widely on topics relating to law and national security and has taught as a distinguished visiting lecturer at Yale Law School.

Preston was previously a member of the ABA standing committee he now chairs. He was named the committee’s chair by Mary Smith, the ABA’s new president and former head of the Indian Health Service. The committee, created in 1962, is the ABA’s oldest standing committee and was founded by then-ABA president and later Supreme Court Justice Lewis J. Powell.

The committee focuses on national security-related legal issues, conducting studies, sponsoring programs, and organizing working groups to educate and assist policymakers, lawyers, the news media, and the public. The 11-member committee also makes recommendations to the ABA on policy positions. The ABA is the world’s largest voluntary association of lawyers, judges, and other legal professionals.