Before becoming a member of Congress he chaired the Southern Governors' Association, the Democratic Governors' Association, the Education Commission of the States, the Democratic Leadership Council, Jobs for America's Graduates, the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors, and the Virginia Forum on Education, and was President of the Council of State Governments.
During the 1960s he served on active duty with the United States Marine Corps, retiring from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1991. He began as the Class Honor Graduate from Marine Officers Basic School in 1961 and ended up as head of the principal recruiting program for Marine officers in 1970. In between, he served in both the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions and his assignments included duty as a Military Social Aide at the White House and command of an infantry company in combat in Vietnam.
He received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1973, clerked for Judge John D. Butzner, Jr., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and practiced law with Williams and Connolly prior to his election to state office. Between his state and federal service he was a partner at Hunton and Williams.
Since leaving the Senate in 2001 he has served as Chairman of the Board of Visitors at the United States Naval Academy, Co-Chairman (with Senior Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit) of the President's Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Co-Chairman (with former Governor Linwood Holton) of a major landowner's alliance that created a special tax district to finance the extension of Metrorail to Tyson's Corner, Reston, and Dulles Airport. He has also been a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard and at the Marshall Wythe School of Law at William and Mary.
He is currently on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board (Chairman of the WMD-Terrorism Task Force), the FBI Director's Advisory Board, the National Intelligence Council's Strategic Analysis Advisory Board, the Iraq Study Group, and the MITRE Corp. Board of Trustees (Vice Chairman). He also serves on the boards of the Space Foundation, the Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy, the Concord Coalition, the National Museum of Americans at War, Strategic Partnerships LLC, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency—and he works on occasional projects with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is married to Lynda Johnson Robb and they have three grown daughters and one granddaughter.
Alan K. Simpson—Member
Alan K. Simpson served from 1979 to 1997 as a United States Senator from Wyoming. Following his first term in the Senate, Al was elected by his peers to the position of the Assistant Majority Leader in 1984—and served in that capacity until 1994. He completed his final term on January 3, 1997.
Simpson is currently a partner in the Cody firm of Simpson, Kepler and Edwards, the Cody division of the Denver firm of Burg Simpson Eldredge, Hersh and Jardine, and also a consultant in the Washington, D.C., government relations firm The Tongour, Simpson, Holsclaw Group. He continues to serve on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards and travels the country giving speeches. His book published by William Morrow Company, Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press (1997), chronicles his personal experiences and views of the Fourth Estate.
From January of 1997 until June of 2000, Simpson was a Visiting Lecturer and for two years the Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. During the fall of 2000 he returned to his alma mater, the University of Wyoming, as a Visiting Lecturer in the Political Science Department and he continues to team teach a class part-time with his brother, Peter, titled "Wyoming's Political Identity: Its History and Its Politics," which is proving to be one of the most popular classes offered at UW.
A member of a political family—his father served both as Governor of Wyoming from 1954 to 1958 and as United States Senator from Wyoming from 1962 to 1966—Al chose to follow in his father's footsteps and began his own political career in 1964 when he was elected to the Wyoming State Legislature as a state representative of his native Park County. He served for the next thirteen years in the Wyoming House of Representatives, holding the offices of Majority Whip, Majority Floor Leader, and Speaker Pro-Tem. His only brother, Peter, also served as a member of the Wyoming State Legislature.