Robert C. Bonner

Robert Cleve Bonner (January 29, 1942) is an American lawyer and arbitration neutral, a former prosecutor, former United States District Judge, former Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and former Commissioner of United States Customs and Border Protection. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology, a retired partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and former Chair of the California Commission on Judicial Performance. Education and early career Bonner was born in Wichita, Kansas. He grew up in Wichita where his father practiced law and his mother was a school teacher. He credits his mother for infusing him with a strong commitment to public service. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1963 and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center in 1966. He was a law clerk for Albert Lee Stephens Jr. of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California from 1966 to 1967. He was on active duty in the United States Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps from 1967 to 1971, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, USNR. During that time, he served for nearly two years on an aircraft carrier, the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42). He was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California from 1971 to 1975, and then went into private practice in Los Angeles for nine years. Afterwards he became the United States Attorney for the same district in 1984. As a United States Attorney, he worked closely with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on two record-breaking money laundering cases, Operations Pisces and Polar Cap, led the prosecution team against the killers of a DEA special agent, and personally prosecuted the first FBI agent charged with espionage. Federal judicial service