Attorney General Jeff Sessions Has Selected James McHenry as the Acting Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Jeff Sessions has selected James McHenry as the acting Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

“I am pleased James McHenry has agreed to lead the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and the Justice Department is fortunate to have him act as the agency’s director,” said Attorney General Sessions. “His experience will serve the department well as EOIR works to reduce the immigration court backlog and to ensure that the law is applied in a fair and efficient manner in immigration proceedings.”

Acting Director McHenry has previously served in the Executive Office for Immigration Review; he first joined the agency in 2003 through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and returned to the agency in 2016, when he was appointed as an administrative law judge (ALJ) for EOIR’s Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO).

Earlier this year, McHenry served as a Deputy Associate Attorney General working on a variety of immigration-related litigation matters and overseeing multiple components reporting to the Office of the Associate Attorney General. From 2014 to 2016, he served as an ALJ for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review in the Social Security Administration. Prior to that, he worked for the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an Assistant Chief Counsel and, later, as a Senior Attorney where he served as a lead attorney for national security, denaturalization, and gang cases, anti-human trafficking operations, and worksite enforcement matters. He also served a detail as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Georgia.

Acting Director McHenry earned a Bachelor of Science from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, a Master of Arts in political science from the Vanderbilt University Graduate School, and a Juris Doctor from the Vanderbilt University Law School.