Jim has represented a variety of corporations, government and corporate officials, political figures, professional athletes, accountants, and lawyers. Among his prominent cases are the representations of Sens. DeConcini, Durenberger and Talmadge before the Senate Ethics Committee. More recently, he successfully argued in separate cases to the Supreme Court that attorney-client privilege survives the death of a client and that survivors have a right of privacy under the Freedom of Information Act. Jim has also recently been involved in major matters concerning intellectual property litigation, the Fannie Mae investigations and litigations, the Major League Baseball steroids investigations, litigation involving law firms and legal ethics, litigation regarding Indian gaming, and the well-publicized investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s name (in which he represented columnist Bob Novak). He also has conducted a number of confidential internal investigations for major institutions. For many years, he has been the general counsel of a prominent Washington-based trade association.

Jim was the assistant chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee. He served as deputy chief counsel in the Alaska Senate Impeachment Inquiry in 1985, and during 1983–1984 was special counsel to the Human Resources Subcommittee, Post Office and Civil Service Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, for its investigation of the 1980 Ronald Reagan campaign. Jim was the chief counsel of the Special Joint Committee on Referendum Review for the Congress of Micronesia in 1978. He also served as the Clinton-Gore transition counsel for nominations and confirmations and as the principal Clinton White House vetter for Supreme Court nominations. Jim was in charge of vetting vice presidential candidates in 2000 for Al Gore and in 2004 for John Kerry, and served in a similar role for Sen. Obama in 2008. He also has done extensive vetting of candidates for Cabinet, White House, Supreme Court and other high government positions for the Obama administration.

Jim is a past member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. In 2011, President Obama appointed Jim to the Board of the USO, and he now chairs the Board’s Governance Committee and serves on its Executive Committee.

Jim is the author of The Power to Probe: A Study of Congressional Investigations, published by Random House and supported by a Ford Foundation grant, as well as numerous articles in national newspapers, magazines, books and professional journals. Recently, he co-authored “Taking Stock of the STOCK Act” (Fall 2012) and “Congressional Investigations: Politics and Process” (Summer 2007), both of which were published in the American Criminal Law Review, and wrote “The Senate Watergate Committee: Its Place in History and the Discovery of the White House Tapes (Fall 2012),” which was published in the Baker Center Journal of Applied Public Policy.