The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has promoted Bradley Brooker to general counsel and head of the Office of the General Counsel in the law enforcement agency’s headquarters in Washington DC.

Brooker was previously deputy GC and has been in charge of the national security and cyber law branch since 2021. He will replace Jason Jones when he starts the role in March. As GC, he will be responsible for giving legal advice to FBI director Christopher Wray and other FBI officials, divisions and field offices.

Prior to joining the FBI, Brooker worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for close to nine years, five of them as principal deputy GC, as well as twice serving as acting GC. He also had a brief spell as a special counsel for oversight and compliance at the National Security Agency, following an earlier stint at the ODNI as a senior associate GC.

Before his government in-house roles, Brooker was an associate at Goodwin Procter and a staff attorney at Zuckerman Spaeder, as well as clerking for Judge Eric Washington in the DC Court of Appeals and Judge Reggie Walton in the US District Court.

Jones, meantime, is set to leave the role after just over three years in the job, having taken over from Dana Boente in August 2020. Prior to that he worked for King & Spalding as a partner in its special matters and government investigations team. He was also a federal prosecutor for almost a decade, serving as a supervisory assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where he oversaw the violent crimes and terrorism section.

Boente had taken over from Jim Baker in 2018, but was ousted by Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr for his role in the investigation of Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn, NBC News reported at the time.

Baker himself went on to become deputy GC at social media platform Twitter before being fired by Elon Musk in 2022 for content moderation decisions Baker had been involved in making prior to Musk acquiring the company. At the time, Musk said he had “concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue”.