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.