Gregory Bestor Craig (born March 4, 1945) is an American lawyer and former White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2010.

After leaving the Obama administration, Craig returned to private practice as a partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

[6] During this period, Craig registered black voters in Mississippi, tutored children in Harlem, and "became Harvard's most widely quoted student leader in opposition to the Vietnam War.

[5][7] After returning to United States, Craig attended Yale Law School, where he was a member of the same class as Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, and David E.

[5] Three years after Craig began at Williams & Connolly, he left to follow his wife to Connecticut, where she obtained a master's degree in fine arts.

[9] One of Craig's first big criminal cases at Williams & Connolly was that of multimillionaire D.C. developer Dominic F. Antonelli Jr., the chairman of Parking Management Inc. (PMI), who was charged with bribery and conspiracy in connection with an attempt to secure a D.C. government lease from D.C. official Joseph P. Yeldell, his codefendant.

[14] In October 1997, Albright gave Craig the additional post of Special Coordinator for Tibetan Affairs, in order "to focus attention on China's suppression of Tibet's cultural and religious traditions.

[2][7][20] Other high-profile clients represented by Craig while at Williams & Connolly include Richard Helms, the ex-director of Central Intelligence who was convicted of lying to Congress over the CIA's role in removing Salvador Allende;[14] UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan;[14][21] Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn;[21] and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

[23] In March 2007, Craig publicly declared his support for Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary; because of his close ties to the Clintons, this attracted widespread attention.

[4][24] In summer 2008, during the presidential campaign, Obama decided to support legislation (specifically, an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) for granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless NSA wiretapping program.

"[16] In late summer and fall 2008, Craig, a skilled trial lawyer, assumed the role of John McCain in Obama's preparations for the presidential debates.

[27] In its November 2008 issue, shortly before the 2008 presidential election, the ABA Journal speculated that Craig might be named Secretary of State in an Obama administration.

[30] Over the objections of the Central Intelligence Agency, Craig also recommended the release of the "Torture Memos" of the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice.

[4][30] In an interview in 2011 (after leaving his post as White House counsel), Craig said of the release of the memos: "I think the President made the right decision.

"[30] As White House counsel, Craig also oversaw the successful confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United States.

"[33] Craig did not know who was responsible for the sustained leaks, although "he suspected they were driven by someone in the White House who was frustrated with the slow progress on shuttering" the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

[33] Nina Totenberg of NPR reported that "There doesn't seem to be much doubt that these leaks came at least indirectly from Rahm Emanuel," the White House chief of staff.

"[35] Craig stated then that he had no plans to leave and that the president had faith in him, but the Times reported that "colleagues and Democrats close to the White House said they expected him to move on around the end of the year, and they have been talking about possible replacements.

"[33] Maureen Dowd wrote that "the way the Craig matter was handled sent a chill through some Obama supporters, reminding them of the icy manner in which the Clintons cut loose Kimba Wood and Lani Guinier.

[30] Craig stated that he had planned to return to Williams & Connolly from the White House until he got a call from an old friend, Clifford Sloan, and a new friend, Joseph H. Flom, who asked him to join their law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, to establish a crisis-management team and a new practice group focusing on global issues and litigation strategies.

[4] On January 27, 2010, Skadden announced that Craig had joined the firm's Washington, D.C. office as a Global Policy and Litigation Strategy Practice Group partner.

[43] The task force recommended a middle ground on continuing U.S. economic and military aid to Egypt; the group's report, released in November 2012, called for "an approach whereby the United States continues to provide substantial economic and military aid while linking both direct support and backing for international financial support to Egyptian cooperation on key U.S.

"[43] Craig led a team of lawyers from Skadden who were commissioned by the government of Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovich to look into errors in the trial of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko on abuse-of-power charges.

[44] The report, released in December 2012, found that Tymoshenko was denied legal counsel at "critical stages" of the trial and that her lawyers were wrongly barred from calling witnesses in her defense.

[44] The report concluded that Tymoshenko's right to a fair trial "appears to have been compromised to a degree that is troubling under Western standards of due process and the rule of law.

[48][49][50] In April 2018, Craig resigned from Skadden following the indictment of Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer at the firm's London office.

Craig was the lead attorney supervising the firm's work for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in which van der Zwaan participated.

[53] Berman said that, following his office's investigation, USAO-SDNY concluded that Craig did not commit a FARA violation and had decided not to pursue charges against him, but that in September 2018, a Trump Justice Department official, Edward O'Callaghan, contacted Berman's office and asked him to charge Craig before the 2018 midterm elections, saying that "It's time for you guys to even things out" after the indictments of Cohen and Chris Collins, a Republican congressman and Trump ally.

[55] The Justice Department ultimately passed the case to federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C.[46] In early April 2019, Craig's lawyers said that they expected him to be indicted by Mueller on charges of concealing and falsifying material facts relating to the investigation's inquiry into possible FARA violations, centering around the work he performed in 2012.

"[53] In 2022, following the publication of Berman's book, the Senate Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into allegations that the Trump administration sought to use the U.S. Attorney's office in SDNY for partisan reasons.