Jim Kelly is a Lecturer at the Busch School. He is the Founder of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., a public interest human rights law firm. Since 2001, he has authored six amicus curiae briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases pertaining to educational and religious freedom, freedom of speech, and international law issues.
Since 2005, Kelly has served on an of counsel basis as Director of International Affairs for the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, where he is responsible for monitoring developments in the areas of human rights, rule of law, democracy, and national sovereignty. From 2005-2008, Kelly served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and as Chairman of its Social and Human Sciences Committee.
From 2001-2008, he served as a legal advisor to the U.S. State Department and as an official U.S. delegate at five international human rights conferences. In 2019, the U.S. State Department appointed him to serve a four-year term as one of two U.S. members of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the “Venice Commission”).
In 2014 and 2015, respectively, Kelly submitted NGO Reports in support of the Holy See’s Reports to the UN Committee against Torture and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
In 2004, Kelly published Christianity, Democracy and the American Ideal, a compilation of the writings of the French-Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain.
He is the Founder and General Counsel of the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, the state of Georgia’s largest K-12 tax credit scholarship organization, and of the Georgia HEART rural hospital tax credit program.
Jim and his wife, Lisa, have two married children and two grandchildren.
