Matthew Glen Olsen (born February 21, 1962) is an American attorney who has served as the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division since 2021. He is the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Born in Fargo, North Dakota, Olsen is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School. Olsen began his career as a law clerk for District Court Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, before entering private practice and working as a trial attorney for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in 1992.
He moved to the United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia where he was a federal prosecutor and served as the first director of the Office's National Security Section from 2004 to 2005. In 2006 Olsen was appointed by President George W. Bush to be the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department's National Security Division, where he served until 2009 when he became the acting director of the Division. In 2009, he was appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to become the Head of the Guantanamo Review Task Force, a commission set up to oversee the legal justifications of the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Olsen later briefly served as Associate Deputy Attorney General and as the general counsel of the National Security Agency.
On July 1, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Olsen to become the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Olsen was confirmed by the Senate on August 16, 2011. He left that post in July 2014.
Olsen was once a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, but resigned on July 18, 2018 over immigration decisions to separate families.
Early life, education, and law career
Born to parents Van and Myrna Olsen in Fargo, North Dakota, Olsen's family moved to Washington D.C. when he was three years old, growing up with his two sisters; Jennifer and Susan. His father, who died in 2008, worked as the chief of staff for North Dakota Senator Mark Andrews in the late 1960s. Olsen's grandfather immigrated from Norway and moved to North Dakota at the age of sixteen.
After graduating from high school in 1980, he attended the University of Virginia, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He worked as a copy aide for the Washington Post before attending Harvard Law School where receiving his Juris Doctor in 1988 and was an executive editor of the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
While away from Harvard, Olsen worked as a Summer Associate at the Schwalb Donnenfeld, Bray & Silbert law firm in Washington D.C in 1986. He briefly worked at McKenna, Conner & Cuneo before working as Summer Associate for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in Juneau, Alaska in 1987. He was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 1988 and has been a member of the District of Columbia Bar since 1990. He clerked from 1988 to 1990 for Norma Holloway Johnson, who was a District Judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Olsen entered private practice as an Associate for Arnold & Porter in 1991.
Department of Justice
Olsen joined the United States Department of Justice in 1992, working as a trial attorney for the Department's Civil Rights Division.
He joined the United States Attorney's office for the District of Columbia in 1994, working as a federal prosecutor. In 2003, he was appointed Deputy Chief for the Organized Crime and Narcotics Trafficking Section within the U.S. Attorney's Office and worked as a Special Counsel to FBI Director Robert Mueller from 2004 to 2005. In 2005, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Kenneth L. Wainstein, appointed Olsen as the Chief of the newly created National Security Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office, where he headed an eleven-member division that prosecuted suspected terrorists, and those who are suspected of illegal arms and human trafficking.