Bert Brandenburg is the executive director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. He previously served as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center from 2010-2012, and as a founding advisory committee member of the Janet Reno Endowment at the Center for Youth Justice at Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
Brandenburg’s government service includes presidential appointments as Acting Deputy Director of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service from 2024-25, and as Director of Public Affairs and chief spokesman for Attorney General Janet Reno. He led a team on the Executive Office of the President Review Group for the federal government’s National Performance Review, served as a domestic policy advisor on the Clinton-Gore Presidential Transition Team, and worked as Counsel for a member of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.
As a nonprofit executive, Brandenburg led Justice at Stake, a nonpartisan national network of more than 50 organizations working to keep courts impartial and independent whose honorary chair was retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; as well as Appleseed, a network of 17 public‑interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico. He has also chaired the boards of OpenSecrets and the National Institute on Money in Politics, and served on the boards of directors of the Task Force on American Democracy and the Lois Roth Endowment.
Brandenburg is an American Bar Foundation Fellow. He was the founding chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Fair and Impartial Courts, and served on the ABA’s ROLI Mexico Judicial Reform Working Group.
He has published dozens of op-eds and scholarly pieces on legal reform issues, including in newspapers and periodicals like the Washington Post, Politico, USA Today, Slate and Legal Times; law reviews including the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Arizona Law Review, Seattle Law Review, Syracuse Law Review, Drake Law Review and the Virginia Journal of International Law; and scholarly journals including Daedalus, Judicature, Judges Journal and Court Review. He has also written and edited numerous monographs and policy reports.
Brandenburg earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Research & Projects Editor on the Virginia Journal of International Law. He earned his B.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.