Adam I. Klein

Adam Klein is a senior lecturer at Texas Law and Director of the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He also chairs the university’s Advisory Committee on Classified Research.

Before joining the Strauss Center, Adam served as Chairman of the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the independent, bipartisan federal agency responsible for overseeing counterterrorism programs at the NSA, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies. As the Board’s Senate-confirmed Chairman, he oversaw its oversight and advice engagements with other federal agencies, while also serving as the Board’s chief executive officer.

Before entering government, Adam was the Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan national-security research institution in Washington, DC. There, his research focused on government surveillance, intelligence powers, and national security law.

Previously, Adam practiced law in Washington, DC, and served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also worked on national-security policy at the RAND Corporation, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project (the non-profit successor to the 9/11 Commission), and in the U.S. Congress. He received his BA from Northwestern University and his JD from Columbia Law School.