Joseph E. Schmitz served as the fifth Senate-confirmed Inspector General of the Department of Defense from April 2002 to September 2005. As such, he was agency head of the most expansive Inspector General organization in the world, with statutory policy oversight responsibility for roughly 60,000 auditors, investigators, inspectors, law enforcement officers, and oversight professionals throughout the Department of Defense. For his service as Inspector General of the Department of Defense, he was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the highest honorary award presented by the Secretary of Defense to non-career federal employees.
Prior to his service as Inspector General of the Department of Defense, Mr. Schmitz was a Partner in the international law firm of Patton Boggs LLP. His pre-Inspector General public service included: law clerk to the Honorable James L. Buckley, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, the Honorable Edwin Meese III. In 2022, he was appointed as a Commissioner on the independent Congressionally-chartered Commission on the State of U.S. Olympics & Paralympics (https://www.csusop.org/).
Mr. Schmitz has published numerous articles and has testified as a constitutional expert before U.S. Senate committees, and before various state legislature committees. From 1995 until 2002, he was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he developed and taught a seminar on advanced Constitutional Law. In May 2013, the Center for Security Policy Press published Mr. Schmitz’ latest book, “The Inspector General Handbook: Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Other Constitutional ‘Enemies, Foreign and Domestic’.”
Mr. Schmitz graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978, and earned his Doctor of Jurisprudence from Stanford University in 1986. He is a Newsmax “Insider” on constitutional issues under the banner, “Support and Defend.” In 2013 he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame (Virginia Chapter) as an “Outstanding American.”