Anthony A. Williams

In 2018, Williams was campaign co-chair for S. Kathryn Allen, a former insurance executive seeking an at-large seat on the Council held by Elissa Silverman. An investigation determined that more than half of Allen's signatures were fraudulently collected and her name was not included on the ballot. Williams did not comment publicly about the incident.

In 2012, Williams joined the board of directors of the Bank of Georgetown.

In April 2012, Williams was appointed the Chief Executive Officer/Executive Director of the Federal City Council. The private organization, founded in 1954, is a group of business, civic, educational, and other leaders interested in promoting economic development and livability in Washington, D.C. It is considered one of the most influential groups in the city.

In January 2007, Williams entered into a partnership with the Washington-area investment bank Friedman Billings Ramsey Group, Inc. to form Primum Public Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on buying and leasing back government and not-for-profit real estate. In 2009 Williams announced he was stepping down as CEO and that Primum would be dissolved. He joined D.C. law firm Arent Fox on May 14, 2009, as Director of State and Local Practice, assisting governments and municipalities with securing stimulus money and managing their budgets.

In March 2008, Williams made headlines by purchasing a home in D.C., a condominium on the city's revitalizing H Street NE corridor.

On the eve of Williams' last day in office in 2006, Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King wrote,

On September 28, 2005, Williams announced he would not seek re-election in 2006. Williams endorsed Council Chair Linda W. Cropp as a successor; however, Cropp lost to Ward 4 Councilmember Adrian Fenty in the Democratic primary. Fenty went on to win the general election.

Williams was instrumental in arranging a deal to move the financially ailing Montréal Expos, a Major League Baseball (MLB) team, to Washington, D.C. Although he faced opposition from much of the D.C. Council, Wiliams eventually prevailed. In late December 2004, the Council approved by one vote a financing plan for a new stadium. The new team, the Washington Nationals, began playing in April 2005, the first time since 1971 that the nation's capital had its own MLB team.

While in office, Williams was elected president of the National League of Cities in December 2004. In January 2005, he was elected Vice Chair of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG).

Driven by a growth in local revenues, income and sales taxes, Williams managed District resources to improve services, lower tax rates, improve the performance of city agencies and invest in infrastructure and human services. This dramatic turnaround required transformational improvements in cash management, budget execution, and revenue collections. After many years of declining population, the District has had a steady growth in population. In its July 2004 issue, Black Enterprise magazine selected Washington, D.C., as the second-best city in the country for African Americans to live and work in because of its housing, jobs, health care and economic development.

In 2002, Williams ran for re-election and stumbled into a political scandal. The firm which he hired to collect signatures to put his name on the Democratic Primary ballot had irregularities with hundreds of names on the petitions. As a result of the irregular petitions, the Williams campaign was fined $277,700 by the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics and his name was removed from the Democratic Primary ballot. He was forced to run as a write-in candidate. His chief opponent, minister Willie Wilson, also ran as a write-in candidate. Despite this handicap, Williams won both the Democratic and Republican primaries as a write-in candidate and went on to be re-elected in the general election.

By 2001, real property values were climbing steadily and Washington, D.C., was experiencing a real estate investment boom in the residential, commercial and retail markets. Congress dissolved the Financial Control Board in September 2001. In 2002 the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE) named Washington, D.C., the top global and U.S. city for real estate investment. (It made the top slot again in 2003 and 2004.)

Williams also alienated some lower-income residents. His first term in office was marked by the beginning of a period of gentrification throughout the city. Longtime residents complained of being priced out of their homes and neighborhoods and forced to move to neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland. In addition, one of Williams' budget-trimming measures was the closure of inpatient services at D.C. General Hospital, the only public hospital in the District. The D.C. Council voted down Williams' proposed closure in the spring of 2001, but their decision was overturned by the Control Board soon afterwards.

In 1999, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gene Weingarten interviewed Williams and wrote a feature article titled "A Funny Thing About the Mayor ... He's Funny" published in The Washington Post's Style Section. In October 2016, after bumping into Williams when both men were called for jury duty, Weingarten wrote in an online chat that Williams "had shown a side of himself absolutely no one knew, a sense of humor so shrewd and adroit he was way ahead of me the whole time." He went on to describe Williams as "an incredibly, organically, wryly funny man who has turned self deprecation into an art form. He also believes deeply in civic responsibility."

Williams' financial successes in the District made him a popular figure. In January 1998, local media reported that Williams was considering a run for mayor in that year's election; he quickly dismissed the notion, but a "Draft Anthony Williams" movement began building nonetheless. When Barry declined to seek a fifth term as mayor in the spring of 1998, Williams finally entered the race, resigning as CFO to campaign. Williams instantly assumed frontrunner status in the race, and in September won the D.C. Democratic primary with 50% of the vote in a six-person race, then won the November 3 general election by a 2–1 margin despite not having held any elected office since 1982. Upon his election, the Control Board announced that it would begin ceding back to Williams much of the executive authority it had stripped of the mayor's office during Barry's tenure.

During his second term, Williams continued his record of stabilizing the finances of the District. The city was able to balance its budget for ten consecutive years between the 1997 and 2006 fiscal years; the cumulative fund balance swung from a deficit of $518 million in the 1996 fiscal year to a surplus of nearly $1.6 billion in the 2005 fiscal year. During this same period, the District's bond ratings went from "junk bond" status to "A" category by all three major rating agencies.

In 1997, Governing Magazine named him "Public Official of the Year".

Williams first rose to prominence in Washington, D.C., as the District of Columbia's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) during the final term of Mayor Marion Barry, who nominated Williams to the position in September 1995. By that time, however, Washington was in the midst of a fiscal crisis of such proportion that Congress had established a financial control board charged with oversight and management of the District's finances. The same legislation had created the position of Chief Financial Officer, which had direct control over day-to-day financial operations of each city agency, and independence from the mayor's office; while Barry had the authority to appoint Williams, only the Control Board had the authority to fire him. This gave Williams an unusual level of political strength in dealings with the mayor, with whom he had a number of very public battles; Williams, who had the support of the Control Board as well as Congress, tended to win these battles, even gaining power in 1996 to hire and fire all budget-related city staffers. Given this political clout, Williams began steering D.C.'s finances toward financial recovery, moving from a $355 million deficit at the end of 1995 to a $185 million surplus in the city's fiscal year 1997.

Williams first ran for office while a student at Yale in 1979 when he was elected to the New Haven, Connecticut, Board of Aldermen. He served until 1982 and during that time served as President Pro-Tempore.

Williams was the first sitting mayor of Washington since 1973 to participate in a Presidential funeral in 2004, when he spoke at Ronald Reagan's funeral, held at Washington National Cathedral. His final speech as mayor would also come at the Cathedral in 2006.

Anthony Allen Williams (born July 28, 1951) is an American politician who was the fourth person to serve as mayor of the District of Columbia, for two terms, from 1999 to 2007. He had previously served as chief financial officer for the District, managing to balance the budget and achieve a surplus within two years of appointment. He held a variety of executive posts in cities and states around the country prior to his service in the D.C. government. Since 2012, he has served as Chief Executive Officer/Executive Director of the Federal City Council. His tenure as mayor has been appraised very highly by the policy community and historians, with MSNBC branding him "one of the best and most successful mayors in US history."

Williams, born Anthony Stephen Eggleton on July 28, 1951, was adopted at age three by Virginia and Lewis Williams, and is one of eight children raised in the home: Lewis IV, Virginia II, Carla, Cynthia, Leif Eric I, Kimberly, and Loris. Williams attended Loyola High School in Los Angeles, CA, and then Santa Clara University. There he became active in the anti-Vietnam War movement as well as President of his sophomore class. But his academics suffered and he eventually left school. Shortly thereafter he joined the Air Force. He volunteered for Vietnam, but was kept in the country to work as an aide in the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing command post. He sought an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy but was instead sent to the academy's preparatory school because of his poor grades at Santa Clara. He excelled and earned an appointment to the Academy. Instead Williams sought to leave the Air Force as a conscientious objector, and was given an honorable discharge in 1974. After that, he worked giving piano and clay sculpture and other tactile art lessons to blind children and counseling Vietnam War veterans in Los Angeles. In 1975, he enrolled at Yale using his veteran's benefits to help pay the bill. He left school to start a map business that failed and returned in 1979. In 1982, he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Yale College, where he was a member of the literary society St. Anthony Hall. In 1987, he earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.