Living a Legacy After 38 years in the federal government, Mark Bradley ’78 has made sure to think beyond himself and serve the greater good.

Emily Innes
February 17, 2025

There are just two words that Mark Bradley ’78 wants carved on his tombstone: public servant. Indeed, it is difficult to find a better way to describe Bradley’s 38-year career in the federal government.

“I was very fortunate to have the career I had, and what I enjoyed most about my work was serving the United States,” Bradley says.

Bradley’s family has a long history of valuing public service, and several family members served across the military, the federal government and the Virginia State Police. At Washington and Lee University, Bradley sought an education that would allow him to follow in their footsteps, and he received his bachelor’s degree in history before pursuing a master’s degree in modern history at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar — the university’s 11th.

“My education at W&L laid the foundation for my career because the study of history is not only the study of human affairs but also the study of past successes and failures,” says Bradley, who also received his J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1983. “I was also always mindful of my responsibility as a Rhodes Scholar to serve something other than myself.”

Bradley recalls learning in professor Milton Colvin’s American foreign policy class at W&L that even well-educated and well-intended individuals can cause damage when they only look at things through their own ideological lenses. He kept this lesson in mind as he embarked on his career.

Bradley first served as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intelligence officer before taking what he calls a “sharp detour” to become a public defender in Washington, D.C., for eight years. Afterward, he joined U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s staff and worked for him until the senator’s retirement in 2000. Bradley learned about crafting public policy and their real-life impacts, and he considers working for Moynihan “the best job I ever had.”

Following Moynihan’s retirement, Bradley practiced national security law at the Department of Justice’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. After Sept. 11, 2001, his office was tasked with helping to prevent additional large-scale terrorist attacks on the U.S. in a way that protected constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties — a difficult task made more challenging by the necessity to not let the work be driven by fear.

“Fear can be a very dangerous emotion in a democracy because it can be used to justify some bad and rash actions that have long echoes,” Bradley says.

In 2016, President Barack Obama approved Bradley’s nomination as director of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives and Records Administration, where Bradley oversaw the federal government’s classification, declassification and controlled unclassified information programs until his retirement in June 2023.

Bradley has also authored two novels, and his 2020 true crime book, “Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America,” is being made into a movie with Academy Award-winning actor Cillian Murphy. Bradley will serve as executive producer on the film.

Bradley encourages all W&L students to consider spending at least part of their careers in local, state or federal service. To reinstill faith in our institutions, he says, the government needs the most broadly educated people.

“A career spent in public service can lead to a real sense of having made a difference on a very large stage,” he says. “What can be better than that?”

This article first appeared in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of W&L: The Washington and Lee Magazine. Contact us at magazine@wlu.edu.