Barry F. Kowalski ’66

Barry F. Kowalski ’66, of Arlington, Va.; June 30, from complications of a stroke. He graduated from Brown with a bachelor’s degree in political science, after which he was commissioned a U.S. Marine lieutenant and commanded an infantry platoon in combat during the Vietnam War. Following military service, he received a law degree from Catholic University of Washington in 1973. After a brief stint in private practice, he taught at the Antioch School of Law and Catholic University and then joined the U.S. Department of Justice in 1981. He spent 33 years defending civil rights under nine different attorneys general and four presidents. He retired in 2014 as one of the country’s premier civil rights prosecutors. Some of his high-profile convictions were against Ku Klux Klansmen in the death of 19-year-old Michael Donald, neo-Nazis in the murder of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg, and police brutality in the 1991 beating of Rodney King. Another highlight of his career was when he led a Justice Department inquiry into allegations that James Earl Ray’s assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was part of a conspiracy. He had been called the “lion” of the civil rights division and the Justice Department’s “pit bull.” An oral history and his papers related to the Vietnam War were donated to the John Hay Library. He was a member of the Sigma Chapter of Psi Upsilon and will be remembered in the words of his friends as “a truly remarkable individual whose dedication to defending peoples’ constitutional rights was palpable.” He is survived by his wife, Katie; three daughters; two granddaughters; and a sister.