James Gette
Legal Counsel
In 1999, James D. Gette was appointed Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. As Legal Counsel, Mr. Gette acts as the Office of the General Counsel's liaison to the Department's Office of Student Financial Assistance ("OSFA"), the Federal government's first performance based organization. Mr. Gette's responsibilities include coordination of all legal services provided to OSFA including litigation, oversight and enforcement, procurement, personnel, and ethics. In addition, Mr. Gette is responsible for special projects designated by the General Counsel.
Prior to his appointment as Legal Counsel, Mr. Gette served as a Federal Negotiator for negotiated rulemaking for student financial assistance loan issues; Special Counsel and Executive Assistant to Acting General Counsel Jamienne Studley. In this capacity, Mr. Gette acted as operational manager for one of the Department's most sweeping reinvention initiatives -- the transformation of the Student Financial Assistance Programs into the first Performance Based Organization in the Federal government; Staff Attorney in the Division of Postsecondary Education; Acting Chief of the Default Management Division. As Chief of the Division he managed the operations of the Office of Postsecondary Education's Default Management Section during the critical design and initial implementation phases of a project to resolve a damaging appeal backlog.
Before joining the Department of Education, Mr. Gette was an associate at Piper & Marbury. While at Piper & Marbury, he worked exclusively on litigation matters including product liability, insurance coverage, commercial, and general negligence matters.
Mr. Gette was born on May 18, 1964, in Erie, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from Westminster College in 1986, where he served as student government president, and his J.D. degree from The University of Chicago Law School in 1989. He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania (1993), Washington, D.C. (1990) and Illinois (1989), and is a member of the American and Washington, D.C. Bar Associations.
Last update December 1, 1999 (TRB)