Former NSA General Counsel Glenn S. Gerstell named ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security chair

August 13, 2026

Former NSA General Counsel Glenn S. Gerstell named ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security chair

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2026 - Glenn S. Gerstell, former general counsel of the National Security Agency, has been named chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security, ABA President Barbara J. Howard announced. Gerstell will serve a three-year term leading the nonpartisan committee, which was founded in 1962 by then-ABA President and later U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

The Standing Committee on Law and National Security conducts studies, sponsors programs and organizes working groups to educate and assist policymakers, lawyers, news media and the public on national security-related legal issues. The committee also makes recommendations to the ABA on policy positions in this area. Gerstell has served as a member of the committee's Advisory Committee and now takes on its top leadership role at a moment when the legal frameworks governing intelligence, cybersecurity and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are under sustained public and legislative scrutiny.

In a concurrent appointment, Margaret Hu, the Davison Douglas Professor of Law and director of the Digital Democracy Lab at William & Mary Law School, has been named chair of the committee's Advisory Committee, an auxiliary body that supports the Standing Committee's work. Hu's scholarship focuses on the intersection of civil rights, national security, cybersurveillance and artificial intelligence.

Gerstell succeeds Stephen W. Preston, a senior partner at WilmerHale and former general counsel of the Department of Defense and of the Central Intelligence Agency, who has chaired the committee since 2023. Hu succeeds Lala R. Qadir, senior director of Technology Security and AI Policy at Microsoft, as chair of the Advisory Committee.

"Rapid, if not overwhelming, technologic changes, in the context of more dangerous world, have created new and complex legal issues in the national security sector. I'm honored to follow Stephen Preston in guiding the Standing Committee to help illuminate these issues for the public and policymakers," said Gerstell.

The Standing Committee on Law and National Security is composed of leading practitioners and scholars in national security law and advises the ABA on some of the most consequential legal questions facing the country. It sponsors the largest gathering of national security lawyers at its Annual Review of the Field of National Security Law conference in Washington, D.C., now in its 36th year.