Roscoe Jones, Jr., is Dean of Drake University Law School. He is the 22nd dean and the first Black dean in the Law School's 160-year history. Before joining Drake Law, Dean Jones taught courses on mass incarceration, civil rights policy, and administrative law at Yale, Chicago, Michigan, Georgetown, George Washington, and University of Washington Law Schools and the Harvard Kennedy School.
Prior to his career in academia, Dean Jones practiced law as a partner and co-chair of the Public Policy Group in the Washington, DC office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, an international law firm, where he helped clients with governmental relations and congressional investigations. He served for a decade on Capitol Hill as chief of staff to Rep. Abigail Spanberger, legislative director to Senator Dianne Feinstein, senior counsel to Senator Cory Booker, and senior counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to then-Chairman Patrick Leahy. He worked at the U.S. Department of Justice as special counsel to then-Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez, appellate attorney in the Civil Rights Division, special assistant U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia and assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington (Seattle). He was a Murnaghan Fellow at the Public Justice Center in Baltimore, Maryland. He clerked for Judge Carl E. Stewart on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Judge Alexander Williams, Jr. on the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Dean Jones believes in the power of higher education to transform the lives of individuals and communities. He serves on national legal academic boards for the Association of American Law Schools, including the Section on Law School Deans, Rural Access to Justice Working Group and Workshop for Pre-Tenured Law School Teachers of Color Working Group.
Dean Jones chairs the national board of the American Constitution Society and is Secretary for the national board of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He has served on the boards of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute (Vice Chair), Stanford Athletic Board, President Lincoln’s Cottage, and the advisory boards of the Center for Democracy and Technology and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a Stennis Fellow on Capitol Hill and Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at the Harvard Law School.
Dean Jones has received numerous honors. During his deanship, the National Bar Association recognized him with the Presidential Excellence Award. He was three times named to the Lawdragon list of the top 500 lawyers in America and Chambers USA ranked him as one of the nation’s top government relations specialists. He was named to The Hill’s Top Lobbyists list and the Top 100 Black Lawyers list by the National Black Lawyers Association. He received the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Brooks R. Burdette New Board Member Rising Impact Award and has been recognized by the Drake Black Law Students Association for his leadership.
Born in Mississippi and raised in Texas, Dean Jones received his B.A. in political science and history from Stanford University with high honors and his J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & Law and co-founded the Center for the Study of Race and Law. He played football at Stanford University and studied abroad at Oxford University's Brasenose College. He has been published in the Harvard Law and Policy Review. He has been a commentator for major news outlets including Scripps News, Iowa Public Radio, Politico, Roll Call, TheHill, Law360, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Iowa Lawyer, Stanford Magazine, Business Record, Above the Law, and others.
