Michael John Gallagher (born March 3, 1984) is an American foreign policy advisor and Republican politician from Brown County, Wisconsin.

[a] While serving in the 118th United States Congress, Gallagher was the chairman of the House Select Committee on Competition with the Chinese Communist Party.

[2] He was a decisive vote against the impeachment of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in February 2024, resulting in outrage directed against him from some members of his party.

[a][5] Regional press reported that Gallagher would be taking a role with TitletownTech, a venture capital firm backed by Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers.

After his parents' divorce, he moved to California and studied at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, while spending summers in Wisconsin.

His first deployment was in November 2007 to lead a counterintelligence and human intelligence team, a time where al-Qaeda appeared to have been defeated by the Iraq War troop surge of 2007; giving "some semblance of stability in the town.

In an interview with The American Interest, Gallagher was very critical of the Obama administration's subsequent drawdown of United States troops from Iraq, because:"... all the predictions we made at the time about creating a vacuum and how dangerous that was proved to be true.

[9][14] Gallagher completed a 117-page senior thesis, "New Approaches to Asymmetric Threats in the Middle East: From Fighting to Winning", under the supervision of Frederick Hitz.

[15] At this time he completed a summer internship abroad with the RAND Europe (UK) CIC[16] in Cambridge, United Kingdom, working on a strategic study of terrorist groups such as Basque separatists.

He then began doctoral studies, writing a dissertation on the administrations of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Cold War,[17] receiving his Ph.D. in government and international relations in 2015.

[20] After Walker dropped out of the presidential race, Gallagher worked as a senior marketing strategist for Breakthrough Fuel, a supply-chain management company.

He did not take a position on the Wisconsin state legislature's lawsuit seeking to invalidate Governor Tony Evers's directive to mandate the wearing of masks in public as a way to combat the transmission of the virus.

[32] In a 2016 profile in the Green Bay Press Gazette, Gallagher blamed President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the success of ISIS in Iraq.

[37] He co-signed a letter to Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick that read, "As China amplifies its campaign of intimidation, you and your company must decide whether to look beyond the bottom line and promote American values—like freedom of speech and thought—or to give in to Beijing’s demands in order to preserve market access.

"[38] In 2020, Gallagher and Tom Cotton drafted a bill banning federal agencies, such as the departments of the Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense, from purchasing drugs manufactured in China.

[44] In February 2024, Gallagher led a bipartisan Select Committee on China delegation to Taiwan and met with President Tsai Ing-wen and President-elect Lai Ching-te.

[48] In December 2022, he co-sponsored a bill with Marco Rubio to prohibit Chinese and Russian-owned social networking services from conducting business transactions in the U.S. under security grounds.

[52] The PACT ACT which expanded VA benefits to veterans exposed to toxic chemicals during their military service, received a "nay" from Gallagher.

[55] Gallagher has been an outspoken critic of the social media platform TikTok, which he describes as "digital fentanyl" because of its allegedly harmful and addictive characteristics.

[27] In 2018, Gallagher voted against a House resolution condemning Trump for his comments attacking four Democratic congresswomen and saying that they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came".

He attributed his opposition to a desire to have non-public investigations and wanting "key language preventing interference in the over 400 ongoing criminal prosecutions".

[68] On January 9, 2021, Gallagher joined a group of other Republican legislators led by Ken Buck of Colorado in signing a letter to President-elect Joe Biden, asking him to formally request that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi halt efforts to impeach Trump.

His announcement came amid his outspoken criticism of the House Republican majority's impeachment of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

[88] Gallagher has won the title of "fastest man in Congress" in the ACLI Capital Challenge (a three-mile race for individuals working in all branches of government and the media) every year since first taking part in 2017, most recently finishing with a time of 19:57 in 2023.