Katzenbach, Nicholas (de Belleville) (1922– )

US attorney general and lawyer. As US deputy attorney 1962–64, he fought to set an active agenda for the Justice Department, focusing on civil rights, antitrust litigation, and the war on crime. He was a major force in the integration of the universities of Mississippi and Alabama and he helped draft the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was US attorney general 1965–66 and undersecretary of state 1966–69. He was senior vice-president and general counsel to IBM 1969–79.

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a prisoner of war in Germany 1943–45, a Rhodes Scholar 1947–49, was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1950, and became a member of the law firm, Katzenbach, Gildea & Rudner, in Trenton, New Jersey. He was general counsel to the Secretary of the Air Force while serving part-time as associate professor of law at Yale University 1952–56. He then taught at the University of Chicago 1956–60 and went to Switzerland in 1960 to pursue an international law project as a Ford Foundation Fellow. He joined the Justice Department in 1961 as assistant attorney general in charge of the office of legal counsel. He became a member of its board and worked on external relations 1984–86. In 1991 he was named chairman of Bank Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) with orders to cut American ties from the tainted international banking system.