Wan J. Kim

Wan J. Kim
2005 Official Portrait
Assistant United States Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division
In office November 9, 2005 – August 31, 2007
Preceded by	Alexander Acosta
Succeeded by	Thomas Perez
Personal details
Born	Seoul, South Korea
Education	Johns Hopkins University (B.A.) University of Chicago (J.D.)
Occupation	Attorney

Wan J. Kim (born 1968) is the former Assistant United States Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice, a position in which he served from November 9, 2005 to August 31, 2007. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kim is the first immigrant to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, and is the first Korean American ever to become an Assistant Attorney General. On August 23, 2007 Kim announced that he was leaving the agency for the private sector.

Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea to father Kim Hak-su and mother Yu Chun-ja. He emigrated to the United States in 1973 at the age of 5, joining his parents who had moved there two years earlier. They moved to Union, New Jersey, where Kim attended Roselle Catholic High School, from which he graduated in 1986. Kim graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with departmental honors in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an Associate Editor of the Law Review.

Kim previously served as an enlisted soldier and a rifle platoon leader in the United States Army Reserve. He also worked on the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee for former Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, and as a law clerk to Judge James L. Buckley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.