Christopher Asher Wray is the 8th and current Director of the FBI/Federal Bureau of Investigation. He formerly worked as a private lawyer and as an Assistant Attorney General for the George W Bush administration.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Christopher was born on 17th December, 1966, in New York City to Gilda and Cecil A. Wray Jr. His mother worked at the Charles Hayden Foundation as a senior program officer, while his Yale Law School graduate father was a lawyer and a later partner at the New York law firm Debevoise & Plimpton.
Wray went to the Buckley School located in NYC. He later enrolled at the well-known boarding private school Phillips Academy situated in Andover, MA. He then went to Yale University and graduated in philosophy in 1989. He subsequently enrolled at Yale Law School and got his Juris Doctor in 1992. Christopher was Yale Law Journal’s Executive Editor during his time at Yale. He also rowed along with the team crew.
Career
After graduating from Yale, Wray clerked at the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for Judge J. Michael Luttig for one year. He then worked at King & Spalding, a law firm based at Atlanta, for 4 years.
In 1997, Wray entered public service and became the Assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. After 4 years, he became the Associate Deputy Attorney General and later the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General for the Justice Department.
On 9th June, 2003, Wray was nominated by President George W. Bush as the 33rd Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. The Senate confirmed his appointment in September. As Assistant Attorney General, Christopher was responsible for investigations of key frauds which included Enron. He resigned from the job in May 2005.
Wray subsequently went to work again for King & Spalding. He was the litigation partner in the Atlanta and DC offices of the firm. He oversaw the firm’s ‘Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group’ and also represented many big companies.
On 7th June, 2017, President Trump announced that he would replace FBI director James Comey with Wray. Christopher was interviewed by Trump in May and the Senate confirmed his appointment in July.
Personal Life and Trivia
- Wray is married to Helen Garrison Howell. They married in 1989. She was his classmate at Yale. The couple has a daughter and a son and the family resides in Georgia.
- Wray was honored with the Edmund J. Randolph Award in 2005. It is the highest award of the Justice Department for leadership and public service.
- While working for King & Spalding, he worked as the personal secretary of Chris Christie, then Governor of New Jersey, at the time of the Bridgegate scandal.
- Wray was formally sworn as FBI Director in September 2017. The ceremony was not attended by Trump. It was thus the first that a Director of FBI was sworn in without the attendance of a President who had nominated the person to the post.
Christopher A. Wray – Salary and Net Worth
As FBI director Wray will get an annual salary of $174,500 as a Level III employee. As of 2016, his net worth was estimated to be $2.5 million.
