R Street Institute names James Wallner senior fellow with R Street Governance Project
WASHINGTON (July 14, 2017) – The R Street Institute today announced the addition of James Wallner as a senior fellow and member of R Street’s Governance Project team and Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group, where he will research and write on Congress, especially the Senate; the separation of powers; legislative procedure; and the federal policy process.
Wallner, who will join R Street July 19, also currently serves as an adjunct professor in the department of politics and the Congressional and Presidential Studies Program at the Catholic University of America.
“James Wallner is a true intellectual heavyweight, we know his work will make a major contribution to the health and wellbeing of our democracy,” said R Street President Eli Lehrer. “We are thrilled to welcome him to the R Street team.”
Before joining R Street, James was group vice president for research at The Heritage Foundation. Earlier in his career, he was executive director of the Senate Steering Committee during the chairmanships of Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Mike Lee, R-Utah.
He is the author of two books, The Death of Deliberation: Partisanship and Polarization in the United States Senate, published in 2013 by Lexington Books, and the forthcoming On Parliamentary War: Partisan Conflict and Procedural Change in the United States Senate, which is scheduled to be published in November by the University of Michigan Press.
“I am excited about this new opportunity,” said Wallner. “R Street’s commitment to critical inquiry and intellectual collaboration makes it the ideal environment in which to focus on my own research interests and writing. Innovative thinking is needed to better understand the challenges facing the American polity today, and I look forward to working with R Street’s outstanding team in my new role to that end.”
James received both his doctoral and master’s degrees in politics from the Catholic University of America. He holds a master’s degree in international and European politics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Georgia.
He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Kimberly; two children; and two golden retrievers.
