Mr. Thomas C. Wingfield was appointed the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy from November 25, 2019 to January 20, 2021.  In this capacity, he supported the Secretary of Defense and other senior Department of Defense leaders by formulating, recommending, integrating, and implementing policies and strategies to improve DoD’s ability to operate in cyberspace.  Prior to this appointment, Mr. Wingfield was the Acting Chancellor and Dean of Faculty and Academic Programs at the College of Information and Cyberspace at the National Defense University in Washington, DC.

Beginning his career as a naval officer, he served as Squadron Intelligence Officer with an F/A-18 strike fighter squadron aboard USS Midway, based in Yokosuka, Japan.  He also served as a Desk Officer at Headquarters, Office of Naval Intelligence, and then as Intelligence Liaison Officer at the Center for Naval Analyses, the Navy’s principal think tank.  While in Washington, he served as a White House Social Aide and completed his law degrees at Georgetown.  

Upon passing the Georgia bar exam, Mr. Wingfield transitioned to the naval reserve and took a position with a defense consulting firm to advise military and intelligence community clients in the areas of treaty compliance, use of force in cyberspace, and space law.  In 2003, he became a Research Fellow of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, providing analysis to Congress and the Administration on the legal and policy aspects of emergent national security issues. 

Appointed an Associate Professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Mr. Wingfield served in the Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational Operations.  Mr. Wingfield then deployed to Afghanistan in 2009-10 as Rule of Law Advisor for COMISAF’s Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team.  He served as Professor of International Law at the George C. Marshall European Center for Strategy Studies, where he directed the Program on Applied Security Studies, and was Professor of Law and Strategy at the newly-established United Arab Emirates National Defense College in Abu Dhabi, UAE.   

Mr. Wingfield holds a B.A. in History and Russian Language (summa cum laude) from Georgia State University, and a Doctor of Laws (J.D.) and a Master of Laws (LL.M., with distinction, International and Comparative Law) from the Georgetown University Law Center.  He is the author of The Law of Information Conflict:National Security Law in Cyberspace and is one of the drafters of the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare (Cambridge, 2013).  A former Chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on International Criminal Law, he is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the District of Columbia Bar, and the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. His wife Kim is a Professor of Renaissance Art History, and they have two children.