James Kirkpatrick Stewart is a Canadian lawyer with over thirty years of experience as Crown counsel handling criminal trials and appeals for the prosecution, including more than eight years working with the United Nations in international criminal law prosecutions as a trial and appellate counsel and legal manager.
In the past, he has served as Senior Trial Attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR); as Chief of Prosecutions in the OTP at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY); and as Senior Appeals Counsel and then Chief of the Appeals and Legal Advisory Division in the OTP at the ICTR.
[citation needed] Stewart was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and is bilingual in English and French.
In 1975, he graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, articled for prominent criminal defence lawyer, Robert J. Carter, Q.C., in 1975–6, and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1977.
Working with a team of lawyers, he developed the capacity of the ICTR OTP to handle criminal appeals, which until then had been the responsibility of counsel at the ICTY.