WilmerHale is pleased to announce that Robert S. Mueller III is joining the firm as a partner after serving as the sixth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a position he took one week prior to the September 11 attacks and held for 12 years under two presidents.

“Bob was the Director who managed the transition of the FBI into an agency that dealt not only with the hardest criminal justice matters but also with the most challenging national security issues, including cyber-security threats. He has remade the relationship between the FBI and the private sector to better protect the nation,” said Robert Novick, co-managing partner of WilmerHale. “Bob brings to the firm his broad range of experience as a career prosecutor, an ability to lead the most sensitive investigations, his steady hand in a crisis and unquestioned integrity. He will enhance and build on WilmerHale's investigations and strategic counseling practices. We are so pleased to welcome Bob to the firm.”

Mueller's career in government service and law enforcement spans more than 35 years. He was a United States Marine Corps officer, an Assistant United States attorney in three different offices, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, and the longest-serving Director of the FBI since J. Edgar Hoover.

Mueller currently holds a teaching appointment at Stanford and will spend time in the firm's West Coast offices and also serves as Executive-in-Residence for Georgetown University at his base in Washington DC. From 1993-1995, Mueller had been a partner at Hale and Dorr LLP, before the firm combined with Wilmer Cutler Pickering LLP a decade ago.

Mueller earned his law degree in 1973 from the University of Virginia School of Law where he served on the Law Review. He received an MA in international relations from New York University in 1967 and graduated from Princeton University with an AB in 1966.