James C. Duff is the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. He was appointed to the position by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. on January 1, 2015. This is Mr. Duff's second appointment to lead the Administrative Office. He previously served as Director from 2006 to 2011.
Mr. Duff is responsible for the management of the Administrative Office, which has approximately 1,000 employees, and for providing administrative support to 2,400 judicial officers, and nearly 29,000 court employees. He serves as liaison for the judicial branch in its relations with Congress, including working with congressional committees to secure the Judiciary's annual appropriation and executing the Judiciary's budget of approximately $7 billion annually.
From 1996 to 2000, Mr. Duff was Chief Justice William Rehnquist's Administrative Assistant, now called "Counselor to the Chief Justice," serving as his liaison with the other branches of government and as Executive Director of the Judicial Fellows Commission. He preceded Sally Rider as the Chief Justice's chief of staff, in which he assisted Rehnquist in his roles as chair of the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Federal Judicial Center Board. He also served as counselor to the Chief Justice as presiding officer of the U.S. Senate’s 1999 presidential impeachment trial.
From 2000 to 2006, Mr. Duff served as the managing partner of the Washington office of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, which was opened by former Majority Leader Howard Baker, Jr. He has taught Constitutional Law at Georgetown University as an adjunct professor for 15 years. He was named the Peter Mullen Professor of Law at Georgetown University for the fall of 2014 and previously served as the first lecturer of the Giles Seminar at Georgetown for two years.
Mr. Duff was appointed to the Georgetown Law Center’s Board of Visitors in 2014 and serves on the boards of Freedom House, the Supreme Court Historical Society and the University of Kentucky Arts & Sciences Advisory Board. He was named to the University of Kentucky Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2012 and was given the Georgetown Entertainment and Media Law Achievement Award in 2012.