James A. Goldston

James A. Goldston is the founding executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which promotes rights-based law reform and the development of legal capacity worldwide.  A leading practitioner of international human rights and criminal law, Goldston has litigated several groundbreaking cases before the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations treaty bodies, and has served as Coordinator of Prosecutions and Senior Trial Attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

Prior to his tenure with OSI, Goldston served as legal director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center; 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, where he specialized in the prosecution of organized crime. He previously worked for Human Rights Watch. A graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, Goldston has engaged in law reform fieldwork and investigated rights abuses in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He has taught at Columbia Law School and Central European University.