Timothy C. Perry
About Tim Perry
Tim Perry is an experienced lawyer, former federal prosecutor, government official, and law professor. An appointee in the Biden-Harris and Newsom administrations, Tim has been entrusted with some of the most challenging and high-stakes assignments and delivered.
In 2008-14, Tim served as an Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of California, where he led numerous investigations into corporate fraud, money laundering, and public corruption, including what was then the largest ever conspiracy to funnel illegal foreign money into US elections. In 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder awarded Tim the US Attorney General's Award, the Department's highest honor.
After leaving DOJ, Tim spent several years in private practice at WilmerHale, advising boards of directors, CEOs, and general counsels in high-stakes litigation and internal investigations.
In 2019-20, Tim left private practice to serve as Governor Gavin Newsom's appointed chief of staff and deputy homeland security advisor at California's Office of Emergency
Services (Cal OES), running day-to-day operations from the end of the Paradise Fire cleanup to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Tim also managed the agency's "peacetime" operations, administering the agency's sizeable grant programs and maintaining California's 911 backbone. Prior to this, Tim was co-chair of the Newsom campaign's Defending California's Values policy committee and served as a lawyer to the campaign.
In 2021-22, Tim joined the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Inauguration Day as part of a small team of appointees responsible for making time-sensitive policy changes and establishing the administration's working relationship with career law enforcement leaders. Tim became the chief of staff and most senior appointee at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in effect leading ICE, the country's second-largest investigative agency, for the Biden administration's first year. During Tim's tenure, ICE ended family detention, ceased indiscriminate workplace "sweeps," and aided in the reunification of separated families, while doubling ICE's arrest of noncitizen aggravated felons. Also during Tim's tenure, Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE subcomponent, continued to expand ICE's footprint and activities overseas, seizing more than 2.6 million barrels of illicit Iranian oil and initiating a global investigation into the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.
In addition to the US Attorney General's Award, Tim, a Fulbright Scholar, is a recipient of numerous commendations from DHS. Tim clerked for the Honorable Peter W. Hall on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and worked for the Honorable Joyce L. Kennard of the California Supreme Court. He is a graduate of Berkeley Law School (JD), the University of Cape Town, South Africa (MSc, Political Studies), and Brown University (AB, Linguistics).
