Bleich, Jeffrey L. (Jeffrey Laurence), 1961-

Jeffrey Laurence Bleich (born 1961) is an American lawyer and diplomat from California, currently the chair of Pacific Gas and Electric Company and of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

A longtime friend of President Barack Obama, Bleich joined the White House staff in March 2009 as Special Counsel to the President and was nominated later that year to become United States Ambassador to Australia. Bleich served as ambassador from 2009 to 2013. After stepping down from his post, he returned to the United States and became a partner and group CEO at the Dentons law firm in San Francisco for several years. Bleich ran in the primary for Lieutenant Governor of California in the 2018 election.

Born at the U.S. 98th Army Hospital in Germany, Bleich grew up in the U.S. state of Connecticut. He graduated from Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. After receiving his B.A. in political science, magna cum laude, Bleich earned an M.P.P. from Harvard with highest honors in 1986, and a J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law with highest honors in 1989. At Berkeley, he served as editor-in-chief of the California Law Review. He clerked for Judge Abner Mikva on the D.C. Circuit and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court, before clerking at the international tribunal in the Hague.

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Bleich was a partner for 17 years at Munger, Tolles & Olson in San Francisco, where he handled many significant pro bono civil rights matters, and was recognized as one of the nation’s top lawyers. He holds, or has held, several other leadership positions, including as chair of the Fulbright Board, chair of the California State University Board of Trustees, president of the California State Bar, president of the Bar Association of San Francisco and president of the Barristers Club of San Francisco. In 1998, he was appointed by President Clinton to serve as director of the White House Commission on Youth Violence following the tragic Columbine shootings.

In recognition of his service, Bleich has received some of the nation’s top honors, including the highest awards for a non-career ambassador by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. In 2009, the City of San Francisco named a day in his honor. Bleich holds honorary degrees from San Francisco State University and Flinders University in Adelaide, which in 2019 named for him the Jeff Bleich Centre for U.S. Alliance Studies in Digital Technology, Security, and Governance.