Christopher Hajec

Mr. Hajec joined IRLI in 2017 as its Director of Litigation, and is responsible for overseeing IRLI’s public interest litigation. He has focused his career on constitutional and other civil rights law in the public interest, and has had an abiding concern about the many adverse effects of illegal and excessive legal immigration on American jobs and communities.

Prior to joining IRLI, Mr. Hajec was an attorney at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), where he litigated a string of high-profile cases, including the defense of videographer James O’Keefe in suits brought by former ACORN employees, a class action suit on behalf of Asian American students discriminated against by the New York City public schools, and a case that resulted in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals striking down Texas’s psychologists licensing statute as an overbroad restriction on free speech. 

Before CIR, Mr. Hajec was an officer in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as a defense counsel before courts-martial and then as Appellate Government Counsel, arguing over 100 appeals before the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. He was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal on the basis of “superior performance.”

He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his undergraduate degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Miami, and studied philosophy and sociology at Oxford University in England.  He is a member of the bars of the United States Supreme Court, District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Pennsylvania, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth and Ninth Circuits.

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