Robert Garrity Jr. is the new special agent in charge of the Denver FBI office, officials confirmed today.
Garrity was selected to head the division by FBI Director Robert Mueller.
He takes over for Richard Powers, who left the office June 11 to become assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs.
Garrity, a Baltimore native, begins his new assignment Sept. 4.
His last assignment was deputy chief information officer and business process re-engineering executive at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Garrity could not be reached for comment today because he was traveling to Japan.
Several of Garrity’s immediate family members, including some of his grown children, work for the FBI, authorities said.
Garrity graduated from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, the University of Baltimore School of Law and earned a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Southern California.
Garrity began his career with the FBI in 1976 in Georgia.
In 1978, he was assigned to the FBI office in New York, where he worked on the foreign counterintelligence squad investigating the activities of Soviet military intelligence.
He was promoted in 1980 to supervisory special agent and transferred to the former Intelligence Division and assigned as an attorney to the precursor of the National Security Law Unit.
Throughout the 1980s, Garrity provided guidance and oversight to agents conducting Soviet counterintelligence.
In 1992, Garrity returned to criminal investigative assignments. Three years later, he was promoted to the position of assistant special agent in charge of the Dallas field office, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the division.
In July 2000, he was selected into the FBI’s Senior Executive Service at the rank of inspector responsible for leading inspection teams to ensure field office and headquarters division compliance with existing policies. During this time, he served as the inspector-in-charge of the Information Security (InfoSec) Working Group, analyzing the FBI’s InfoSec policies in light of the damage committed by former Special Agent Robert Hanssen, who was convicted of committing espionage.
In July 2001, Inspector Garrity was assigned to assess the FBI’s records-management system after the late production of documents in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.
From January 2003 through January 2004, he served as the acting assistant director of the Records Management Division.
Prior to his last assignment in the information office, Mueller appointed Garrity to serve as the special agent in charge of the Jackson, Miss., field office, where he served from June 2004 to June 2005.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
