Christopher Richardson is an immigration attorney and former U.S. Diplomat. He has a wide range of experience as an immigration attorney in providing strategic corporate immigration counsel to clients ranging from small and medium-sized companies to finance, consulting, accounting, educational services and healthcare services industries. He also works on pro bono immigration cases including asylum for unaccompanied minors and advising non-profit groups and legal clinics on a range of consular-related issues.
Richardson was a Foreign Service officer for 7 years. He served as various roles including Deputy Consular Section Chief, American Citizens Services Chief, Immigrant Visa Chief, and Nonimmigrant Visa Chief with assignments in Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Spain. He won numerous State Department awards including Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards.
He resigned in protest against both the Travel Ban and the President’s comments regarding African countries in January 2018. Since then, he wrote an affidavit against the waiver process for the Travel ban and Justice Stephen Breyer cited that affidavit in his dissent in Trump v. Hawaii. Richardson has been featured in Mother Jones, Slate Magazine, Reuters, NPR, Embedded, All Things Considered, SCOTUS Blog, BBC, Georgia Public Radio, Intercept, and the Atlanta Constitution Journal. He has also been interviewed by CNN and CBS. Richardson has written several well-received opinion columns for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Slate Magazine and the Nation about immigration policy under Presidents Trump and Obama.
Richardson serves on the Board of Directors for Upstate Forever (an environmental group) and Upstate International (both in South Carolina). He is also on the advisory board of the Center for Victims of Torture and has advised U.S. Senators and House members on a wide range of immigration issues. Richardson has also worked at international law firms including Nelson Mullins LLP, Alston and Bird LLP, and Kilpatrick Townsend LLP. Richardson is a graduate of Duke University School of Law and graduated summa cum laude from Emory University in 2003. He is also the co-author of the Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement (2014).
