George Peirce is a Senior Fellow in FPRI’s National Security Program.  He has been involved with national security affairs and constitutional and international law as a senior executive, attorney and law professor.  From 2004 to 2016, he served at the Pentagon as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s General Counsel supporting five successive DIA Directors.

More recently, George was Stetson University College of Law’s Culverhouse Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, where he designed and taught two new courses, International Security Law and Policy, and a national security and constitutional law seminar called The Powers of War and Peace: The President, Congress and the Courts.  He has also served on the International Law faculty at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School and taught a national security law seminar as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School.  

Earlier in his career, George worked in private practice and at the U.S. Department of Justice, after beginning his legal career as an Army judge advocate.  His military assignments ranged from duty with the 1st Infantry Division to legal oversight of intelligence activities and special operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Army, along with overseas duty in Turkey, Panama, Germany and Belgium at the headquarters of the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.  

Later, as an Army Reserve Colonel, George served on active duty after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the Principal Deputy Staff Judge Advocate at the headquarters of U.S. Joint Forces Command/NATO Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic.  He and his colleagues advised the command on the many novel domestic and international legal issues raised by initial combat operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban. 

George holds a BS from West Point, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MS in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University, and is also a graduate of the U.S. Army War College.  He has published articles on international law and public corruption in China, and given academic and public presentations at Oxford, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, the National Defense University, and the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs at the University of South Florida.