Thomas Wolf

Thomas (Tom) Wolf is the Brennan Center’s director of democracy initiatives. An experienced attorney and strategist, Wolf leads major constitutional litigation and jurisprudence projects for the Democracy Program. He is the founder of the Historians Council on the Constitution and the Brennan Center’s census project.

Wolf advises civil rights groups, academic experts, state and local governments, and others on legal strategy relating to democracy issues, particularly those with a high likelihood of U.S. Supreme Court review. He has organized the amicus briefing for several of the Supreme Court’s most significant democracy cases of the past decade and co-led the pathbreaking lawsuit that extended the timelines for the 2020 census.

Wolf’s articles, op-eds, and commentary on the law and democracy issues have appeared in major media outlets nationwide and globally. He routinely speaks and lectures on law and policy at leading universities, law schools, and public policy schools.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Wolf was a member of the Supreme Court & Appellate Group at Mayer Brown LLP. He began his legal career as a clerk for Senior Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Wolf graduated summa cum laude with a BA in history from Harvard College. He holds advanced degrees in political thought and intellectual history from the University of Cambridge and urban development planning from the Bartlett Faculty of University College London, which he attended as a Marshall Scholar. He received his JD from Yale Law School.