Robert B. Charles

Robert B. Charles is the former assistant secretary of state at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. He served under Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Biography

Education

Robert (Bobby) Charles received a J.D. from Columbia Law School in New York, M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Oxford University in England, and A.B. from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He began his career clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with Judge Robert R. Beezer (1987–88).

Career

After clerking on the Ninth Circuit, he specialized in criminal justice, intellectual property and antitrust law as a litigator in New York and Washington, at Weil Gotshal & Manges and Kramer Levin between 1988 and 1994. From 1992 through early 1993, he stepped into the public sector and served on the George H.W. Bush White House team, as a Deputy Associate Director, Office of Domestic Policy. Ten years earlier, he had served as a temporary appointee in the first-term Reagan White House for periods of 1981, '82 and '83. From 1995 through late 1999, he served as Staff Director and Chief Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice Subcommittee under Chairman/ Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. During that period, he wore three professional hats, also serving as senior staffer to The U.S. Speaker’s Task Force on a Drug Free America and U.S. House Bi-Partisan Drug Policy Group. All counter-narcotics and counter-narco-terrorism legislation was marked-up by or originated in that subcommittee, task force and policy group. From 1998 through 2000, he taught courses on Government Oversight and Cyberlaw at Harvard University's Extension School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he earned the Petra T. Shattuck Award for Excellence in Teaching.