Wesley Samuel Williams Jr. (born in November 13, 1942) is the first African-American to serve both as legal counsel to the

United States Senate The United States Senate is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and ...

and president of the

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

association. He serves as the Cathedral Priest Scholar and Nave Chaplain at the

Washington National Cathedral The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Episcopal Diocese of Washington, commonly known as Washington National Cathedral or National Cathedral, is a cathedral of the Episcopal Church. The cathedral is located in Wa ...

, as well as a member of the Dean Council and Service Rotas.

Early life

Williams was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

to Wesley Samuel Williams Sr., the first African-American president of the

District of Columbia Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

Board of Education A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional area, ...

, and Bathrus Bailey, a school teacher, counselor and college professor.

Career

A graduate of the

Taft School The Taft School is a private coeducational school located in Watertown, Connecticut, United States. It enrolls approximately 600 students in grades 9–12. Overview History The school was founded in 1890 as Mr. Taft's School (renamed t ...

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

Columbia Law School Columbia Law School (CLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Columbia University, a Private university, private Ivy League university in New York City. The school was founded in 1858 as the Columbia College Law School. The un ...

(

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

), the

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the graduate school of international affairs of Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. Fletcher is one of America's oldest graduate schools of international relations. As of 2017, the student bo ...

(

Juris Doctor A Juris Doctor, Doctor of Jurisprudence, or Doctor of Law (JD) is a graduate-entry professional degree that primarily prepares individuals to practice law. In the United States and the Philippines, it is the only qualifying law degree. Other j ...

), and

Virginia Theological Seminary Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), formally the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, is an Episcopal Church (United States), Episcopal seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. It is the largest and second-oldest such accredited se ...

, Williams is a partner at

Covington & Burling Covington & Burling LLP is an American multinational law firm. Known as a white-shoe law firm, it is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and advises clients on transactional, litigation, regulatory, and public policy matters. The firm has addition ...

, and is co-Chairman of the Board of Directors and co-CEO of the Lockhart Company. He served the Episcopal Diocese of the Virgin Islands (U.S. and U.K.), chairing the chaplaincy of the regional hospital and cancer institute on

Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands Saint Thomas (, , ) is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea, and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. Along with surrounding minor islands, it is one of t ...

Personal life

He was married to attorney Karen Hastie Williams until her death on July 7, 2021 at age 76 from

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include problems wit ...

. They had three children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Wesley S. 1942 births Living people 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century Anglican priests The Fletcher School at Tufts University alumni Columbia Law School alumni Virginia Theological Seminary alumni Harvard Law School alumni Harvard College alumni Taft School alumni People associated with Covington & Burling