Samuel M. Witten

Samuel M. Witten is a United States Lawyer who was Deputy Legal Adviser of the Department of State from 2001 to 2007, and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration from 2007 to 2009.

Samuel M. Witten was educated at the University of Maryland, College Park, receiving a B.A. in 1979, and at Columbia Law School, receiving a J.D. in 1983.

After law school, Witten clerked for Judge Stanley Seymour Brotman of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. He then spent 1984 through 1989 working as a staff attorney at the United States Department of State. He worked at the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers from 1989 to 1992, where his work particularly focused on the right of U.S. airlines to operate outside the United States. He joined the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division in 1992, working there until 1993. In 1993-94, he returned to the State Department and headed an interagency team representing the United States at an international arbitration relating to the U.S.'s longstanding dispute with the United Kingdom related to U.S. airlines' access to London Heathrow Airport.