Tess Bridgeman

Dr. Tess Bridgeman (Bluesky – LinkedIn) is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Just Security. She served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President, Associate Counsel to the President, and Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security Council (NSC) during the Obama administration. She also served at the State Department in the Office of the Legal Adviser as Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser and, prior to that role, as an Attorney Adviser in the Office of Political-Military Affairs.

Bridgeman is a Senior Fellow and Visiting Scholar at NYU Law School’s Reiss Center on Law and Security, where she created the War Powers Resolution Reporting Project. She is an affiliate at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), lectures at Berkeley Law, is a former chair of the American Society of International Law (ASIL)’s Strategic Initiatives Committee, and currently serves on ASIL’s Executive Council. Previously in her career, Bridgeman has worked at the World Bank Inspection Panel, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and clerked for Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Bridgeman has a D.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar; a JD from NYU Law School, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, which she attended as a Root-Tilden-Kern and Institute for International Law and Justice Scholar; and a BA from Stanford University.