Thomas Graham Jr. (diplomat)

In 2010, Thomas Graham was appointed to the United Arab Emirates' International Advisory Board, guiding that country's nuclear energy program and holding it to the highest standards of safety, security, and nonproliferation.

Graham is also the Director and Board Chairman of CanAlaska Uranium, a mining exploration company. Thomas Graham is a member of the New York, the District of Columbia and Kentucky Bar Associations and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1986 to 1994 he chaired the committee on Arms Control and Disarmament of the American Bar Association. Graham is also the executive chairman of the Lightbridge Corporation and a National Advisory Board member of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the research arm of Council for a Livable World.

Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr. is a former senior U.S. diplomat. Graham was involved in the negotiation of every single international arms control and non-proliferation agreement from 1970 to 1997. This includes the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT Treaties), the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START Treaties), the Anti-ballistic missile (ABM) Treaty, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT), Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). In 1993, Ambassador Graham served as acting director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) from January to November, 1993 and Acting Deputy Director from November, 1993 to July, 1994. From 1994 through 1997, he was president Bill Clinton's special representative for Arms Control, Non-Proliferation, and Disarmament. Graham successfully led the U.S. government efforts to achieve the permanent extension of the NPT in 1995. Graham also served for 15 years as the general counsel of ACDA. Throughout his career, Thomas Graham has worked with six U.S. Presidents including Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Ambassador Graham worked on the negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention and managed the Senate approval of the ratification of the Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical and biological weapons in war, as well as the Biological Weapons Convention.

Graham graduated from Harvard Law School in 1961. Following graduation, he was offered a clerkship with Chief Judge Wilbur Miller of the Circuit Court of appeals for the District of Columbia. In early 1962, congressman Brent Spence offered Graham the position of the United States House Committee on Banking and Currency (now known as the United States House Committee on Financial Services) for the balance of that year. In 1963, he was hired by Jim Saxon the Comptroller of the Currency at the U.S. Dept of the Treasury as his legislative assistant. In 1968, Graham worked for the Nixon campaign with United Citizens for Nixon-Agnew (an organization designed to appeal to all citizens, not just Republicans). It was during this time that he ultimately decided to change his registration from Democrat to Republican. In 1969 Graham left New york where he worked for a large law firm of Shearman and Sterling, and returned to Washington to re-enter government service. In September 1970, Graham began his career at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and worked for that agency for 27 years.

While in Louisville Male High School, Graham was elected president of the Athenaeum Literary Association (An old and prestigious Louisville high school fraternity). He later attended Princeton University where he graduated with a B.A from Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1955. He wrote his senior thesis on the American attitudes towards Soviet power. When Graham was a senior in Princeton, he applied and was accepted to Harvard Law School but decided to go to L'Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris for a year between college and law school. Before attending Harvard, Graham joined the United States Army from 1956 to 1958. At the time, he was interested in becoming a lawyer for the Middle East oil company and in the summer of 1958 took an intensive Arabic language course at Harvard University. While at Harvard Law School he took then professor Henry Kissinger's seminar on defense policy and administration. He graduated from Harvard with a J.D in 1961.

Thomas Graham Jr. grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended the Louisville Male High School. Several of Graham's family members were involved in politics. His great-uncle, William D. Connor, was lieutenant governor of Wisconsin under governor James O. Davidson 1907-1909 and chairman of the Republican Party in Wisconsin for many years. His grandmother's sister was the grandmother of Melvin Laird, President Nixon's secretary of defense. And his grandfather, Thomas Jackson Graham was a Presbyterian minister who moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1920 to take over the Warren Memorial Presbyterian Church, the largest Presbyterian church in the city at that time. Graham's father, Thomas Graham was the chairman of the sinking fund in Louisville. He was an active Democrat, served for many years as treasurer of the Democratic Party in Louisville, and remained politically active throughout his life.