James A. Goldston oversees the Justice Initiative’s promotion of rights-based law reform and the development of legal capacity worldwide. A leading practitioner of international human rights and criminal law, he has litigated several groundbreaking cases before the European Court of Human Rights and United Nations treaty bodies. He served as coordinator of prosecutions and senior trial attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.
Prior to Open Society, Goldston was the legal director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre; director general for human rights of the Mission to Bosnia- Herzegovina of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; and prosecutor in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Goldston graduated from Columbia College and Harvard Law School and has taught at Columbia Law School and Central European University.