Richard Lewis Thornburgh (July 16, 1932 – December 31, 2020) was an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 76th United States attorney general from 1988 to 1991 under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

Ginny (Judson) Thornburgh was a former schoolteacher from New York, who holds degrees from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Following an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives against William S. Moorhead in 1966, Thornburgh served as an elected delegate to the 1967–1968 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention where he spearheaded efforts at judicial and local government reform.

In 1969 President of the United States Richard Nixon appointed Thornburgh as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, where he earned a reputation for toughness on organized crime.

The victory was attributed in part to Thornburgh's campaign promises to crack down on government corruption, at a time when more than 60 persons in the Shapp administration were indicted on criminal charges.

Following the unprecedented 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Governor Thornburgh was described by observers as "one of the few authentic heroes of that episode as a calm voice against panic."

After leaving office in 1987, Thornburgh served as director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Thornburgh established strong ties with law enforcement agencies around the world to help combat drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism and international white-collar crime.

[6][7][8][9][10] Gray did not run in the election, and in fact resigned from Congress two months prior to it, in order to take a job as president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund.

[12] It pertained to reform, restructuring, and streamlining efforts designed to make the United Nations peacekeeping, humanitarian and development programs more efficient and cost-effective.

After his 25 years in public service, Thornburgh re-entered private legal practice returning to K&L Gates, the law firm he originally joined in 1959.

In 2004, Thornburgh was asked by CBS to undertake an independent investigation of the so-called Rathergate controversy with former Associated Press CEO, Lou Boccardi.

Then in October 2005 Thornburgh was asked to represent controversial Democratic Pennsylvania politician and nationally renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who was then serving as Coroner of Allegheny County.

In February 2013, Thornburgh released a report criticizing the conclusions of Louis Freeh about the Penn State child sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky.

[citation needed] Thornburgh, a long-time supporter of self-determination, authored "Puerto Rico's Future: A Time to Decide" in 2007, in which he calls for immediate change in the island's territorial/commonwealth status.

The book is based in part on ongoing research he has done regarding Puerto Rico's vexing political status problem since he testified as attorney general on behalf of the first Bush administration on the issue before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee of the United States Senate in 1991 and for an amicus curiae brief he filed in a Puerto Rico voting rights case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

[14] Throughout his career, Thornburgh traveled widely by visiting over 40 countries and meeting with leaders from Canada, Mexico, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, India, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand and Central and South America.