Jeff Sessions

Biography

Jeff Sessions was born in Selma, Alabama, in 1946. He graduated from Huntingdon College in 1969 and from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1973, practised law in Russellville and Mobile, and served as a captain in the Army Reserve in the 1970s.

He joined the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of Alabama in 1975 and led it as U.S. attorney from 1981 to 1993. A 1986 nomination to a federal judgeship failed in the Senate Judiciary Committee after former colleagues testified that he had made racially insensitive remarks, which he denied. He was elected attorney general of Alabama in 1994.

Sessions won a U.S. Senate seat in 1996 and held it for two decades as one of the chamber's most conservative members, opposing immigration reform and the major economic and health-care bills of the late 2000s. An early backer of Donald Trump, he became U.S. Attorney General in February 2017.

As attorney general he recused himself from the Russia inquiries after his own contacts with the Russian ambassador came to light, toughened charging policy, took a hard line on sanctuary cities and implemented the policy that separated migrant families at the border. Trump forced his resignation in November 2018, and Sessions lost the 2020 Republican primary for his former Senate seat.