Jonathan J. Wroblewski

Jonathan Wroblewski has been the Director of the Harvard Law School Semester in Washington Program since 2010. From 2008 until 2024, he served as the Director of the Office of Policy and Legislation in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he led a team of policy analysts and attorneys in developing, reviewing, and evaluating national crime, sentencing, and corrections policy and legislation. Jonathan represented the Department of Justice on the United States Sentencing Commission, the Federal Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on the Criminal Rules, and the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Council.

Jonathan began his federal career in 1988 as a prosecutor with the Department’s Civil Rights Division, where he prosecuted criminal civil rights cases, including law enforcement misconduct, involuntary servitude and hate crimes. In 1994, Jonathan joined the United States Sentencing Commission, serving as Deputy General Counsel and then Director of Legislative Affairs. In 1998, he rejoined the Department of Justice in the Criminal Division’s Office of Policy and Legislation. Prior to his federal service, Jonathan served as an assistant public defender in the Alameda County Public Defender’s office, where he represented indigent criminal defendants at all stages of litigation. Jonathan’s prior academic work includes being a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge in 2005 as part of the Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy program and serving as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University’s National Law Center and George Mason University School of Law. Jonathan graduated from Duke University in 1983 and from Stanford Law School in 1986.