Mary B. DeRosa served as Deputy Assistant and Deputy Counsel to the President, and as National Security Council Legal Adviser in the Obama Administration. After leaving the White House, she served as Alternate Representative of the United States to the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly, an Ambassador-level position with the US Mission to the United Nations. Prior to joining the Obama Administration in 2009, Ms. DeRosa was Chief Counsel for National Security for the Senate Judiciary Committee, working for the Chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy. She has also been a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served on the staff of the Clinton Administration National Security Council as Legal Adviser and Deputy Legal Adviser, and was Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the Department of Defense. Before joining the government, Ms. DeRosa was in private practice at Arnold & Porter. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Richard Cardamone, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Ms. DeRosa is currently the Chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board, a Judge on the Data Protection Review Court, a member of ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security, and a member of the Boards for the Leadership Council for Women in National Security and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. She was previously a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, Chair of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Legal Advisory Board, and a member of the National Security Agency’s Legal Advisory Board.

Scholarship

Selected Contributions to Other Publications

Mary B. DeRosa & Ashley Nicolas, The President and Nuclear Weapons: Authorities, Limits, and Process (Nuclear Threat Initiative, Dec. 2019).
[WWW] [Gtown Law] [SSRN]

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

Brief of Amici Curiae Former National Security Officials in Support of Respondents, N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, No. 20-843 (U.S. Sept. 21, 2021).
[WWW]

Book Chapters & Collected Works

Mary DeRosa, Lawyering and the Use of Force in Libya and Syria Operations, in Research Handbook on Law and Diplomacy 61-82 (Margaret E. McGuinness & David P. Stewart eds., Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar 2022).
[BOOK]
Mary B. DeRosa, Congressional Oversight of US Intelligence Activities, in National Security Intelligence and Ethics 216-231 (Seumas Miller, Mitt Regan & Patrick Walsh eds., New York: Routledge 2022).
[Gtown Law] [BOOK]
Mary B. DeRosa & Mitt Regan, Accountability for Targeted Killing, in Counter-Terrorism: The Ethical Issues 61-76 (Seumas Miller, Adam Henschke & Jonas Feltes ed., Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar 2021).