James Robertson

James Robertson (May 18, 1938 – September 7, 2019) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 1994 until his retirement in June 2010. Robertson also served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 2002 until December 2005, when he resigned from that court in protest against warrantless wiretapping. Early life, education, and Navy service Robertson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 18, 1938; his father was a banker, his mother a social worker. Robertson had a twin sister. He was raised in Oberlin, Ohio, and Dayton, Ohio. He attended his freshman year of high school in the public schools and then transferred to Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. He received a B.A. cum laude from Princeton University in 1959, on a Navy ROTC scholarship. Robertson was a member of the American Whig–Cliosophic Society at Princeton. Robertson served in the United States Navy from 1959 to 1964, achieving the rank of lieutenant. He served on a radar picket destroyer with a home port in Jacksonville, Florida, first in the position of deck officer, then as anti-submarine warfare officer, and then as gunnery officer. Robertson spent his last two years in the navy on desk duty at the Office of Naval Intelligence at The Pentagon and simultaneously attended the George Washington University Law School as a night student. After leaving the navy, he finished his third year as a day student, and was editor-in-chief of The George Washington Law Review. He received his LL.B in 1965. Legal career With the exception of a three-year gap from 1969 to 1972, Robertson was in private practice in Washington, D.C., from 1965 to 1994 at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. While at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, Robertson worked under Louis F. Oberdorfer and later represented the Automobile Manufacturers Association in connection with the development of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. From 1969 to 1972, when Robertson served with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, as chief counsel at the organization's offices in Jackson, Mississippi (1969–1970) and as national director in Washington, D.C. (1970–1972).