James M. Walker, Jr., Alabama Homeland Security Director

James M. Walker, Jr. was appointed on January 20, 2003, by Governor Bob Riley to serve as Alabama's first Director of Homeland Security.

Director Jim Walker was born on October 5, 1959, at Fort Benning, Georgia. He is the oldest son of a career Army officer father and school teacher mother. His father hails from Tennessee and his mother's family hails from Alabama and Tennessee. Director Walker spent his youth moving from Army base to Army base in the southeastern United States. He attended Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee on an ROTC Scholarship, graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration. He also holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma, and, in conjunction with an American Political Science Association Fellowship, studied Congress and Foreign Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C.

Director Walker served in the Army from 1981-2001, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. An Infantry officer and Airborne Ranger, he served in both the 25th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). He has more than seven years experience as an Army Congressional Liaison and Government Affairs Officer.

His additional military assignments included service as aide-de-camp to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, operations briefer to General Colin Powell during Operation Desert Shield, aide to President Ronald Reagan, and congressional fellow and legislative assistant to Congressman John Tanner (D-Tennessee) who, at the time, was a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

After retiring from the Army, Director Walker worked in Washington D.C. as a strategic consultant for a Houston-based company. In this capacity, Director Walker's legislative specialties included defense, transportation, and homeland security issues.

Dr. John Christy, Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center, National Space Science and Technology Center, University of Alabama-Huntsville . In November 2000 Gov. Don Siegelman appointed him to be Alabama's State Climatologist. In 1989 Dr. Roy W. Spencer (then a NASA/Marshall scientist and now a Principle Research Scientist at UAH) and Christy developed a global temperature data set from microwave data observed from satellites beginning in 1979. For this achievement, the Spencer-Christy team was awarded NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991. In 1996, they were selected to receive a Special Award by the American Meteorological Society "for developing a global, precise record of earth's temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate." In January 2002 Christy was inducted as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

Dr. Christy has served as a Contributor (1992, 1994 and 1996) and Lead Author (2001) for the U.N. reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in which the satellite temperatures were included as a high-quality data set for studying global climate change. He has or is serving on five National Research Council panels or committees and has performed research funded by NASA, NOAA, DOE, DOT and the State of Alabama and has published many articles including studies appearing in Science, Nature, Journal of Climate and The Journal of Geophysical Research. Dr. Christy has provided testimony to several congressional committees.

Dr. Christy received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Illinois (1984, 1987). Prior to this career path he had graduated from the California State University in Fresno (B.A. Mathematics, 1973) and taught Physics and Chemistry as a missionary teacher in Nyeri, Kenya for two years. After earning a Master of Divinity degree from Golden Gate Baptist Seminary (1978) he served four years as a bivocational mission-pastor in Vermillion, South Dakota where he also taught college math. He was featured in the February 2001 issue of Discover magazine in which his diverse background was highlighted.

Dr. Christy has been active in local educational groups. At Grissom High School he served as chairman of the Facilities committee, helping in securing the new Science wing and Gymnasium and was President of the PTSA, Alabama's largest, in 1997-98. He also served on the Huntsville City Schools Strategic Planning Committee and its Finance subpanel. He is a member of the Huntsville City Surface Water Management Committee.

Dr. Christy is married to the former Babs Joslin, a fellow missionary whom he met in Kenya. They have two children, Mrs. Alison Fields, an Applied Math graduate of Auburn University and cost-analyst for TetraTech/FW, and Brian, a Physics/Math graduate of Auburn and now a graduate student at the University of Maryland. Dr. Christy's favorite hobby is gold panning which he developed as a teenager in California, and he also runs, completing races from 2 to 31.1 miles over rugged terrain in the past year."