Prior to his service with DOE/NNSA, Mr. Jonas was a Marine Corps officer serving at the Pentagon as nuclear nonproliferation planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997-2001.  He has negotiated numerous international treaties and agreements, including the U.S. – India Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation, and has extensive experience working with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Conference on Disarmament, and the United Nations. For his service on the Joint Staff, he received the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

 

His service in the U.S. Marine Corps included a wide variety of command and staff billets.  He served as a prosecutor and defense counsel, supervisory defense counsel, legislative counsel, supervisory appellate defense counsel, and served as the Staff Judge Advocate of the 3d Marine Division in Okinawa and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (afloat).  He also commanded Headquarters Company, 5th Marine Regiment and Support Company, Headquarters and Service Battalion, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. As counsel of record in the case of Davis v. United States, 512 U.S. 452 (1994), he became the first active duty judge advocate in the history of the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps to argue a case at the U.S. Supreme Court.  He received the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces Award for Excellence in Legal Writing in 1992 and was chosen as the Outstanding Career Judge Advocate for the Marine Corps in 2000. He concluded his military service as a lieutenant colonel in 2001. 

 

Mr. Jonas has been published in The Washington Post, Proceedings, the Military Law Review, and the North Carolina Central University Law Review on a variety of national security topics. He has been published in the New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, the Michigan State Law Review, and the Florida Journal of International Law on nuclear non-proliferation law and international law topics. He has two law review articles forthcoming from the Georgetown Journal of International Law and the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law. 

 

Mr. Jonas is an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and the George Washington (GW) University Law School where he teaches nuclear non-proliferation law and policy, and he is a frequent speaker on this topic. He has also been a Distinguished Research Fellow and Lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College. He was recently recognized as Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at GW. He is on the Board of Directors of the Marine Executive Association and was a volunteer for 13 years at Doorways for Women and Families, a temporary shelter. His other interests include competitive tennis, racquetball, hiking, travel, and reading.

 

Mr. Jonas attended Denison University in Granville, OH where he graduated with a B.A. in Political Science in 1978.  He received his J.D. from the Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, NC in 1981. He holds an LL.M. in military law (criminal law focus) from the Judge Advocate General’s School, U.S. Army, in Charlottesville, VA (1991) and an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law (national security law focus) from Georgetown University Law Center (2005), with Distinction. He will receive his masters degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College in 2012.