John R. Tunheim
John Raymond Tunheim is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota.
Education and career
Tunheim was born in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, in 1953. He attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. He then attended the University of Minnesota Law School, receiving his Juris Doctor in 1980. From 1980 to 1981, Tunheim was a law clerk for Judge Earl R. Larson of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. From 1981 to 1984, he was in private practice in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He then joined the Office of the State Attorney General of Minnesota, serving as an assistant state attorney general and the manager of the Public Affairs Litigation Division from 1984 to 1985, as Minnesota state solicitor general from 1985 to 1986, and as chief deputy state attorney general from 1986 to 1995. He was an adjunct professor in the University of Minnesota Law School in 1994. Tunheim also chaired the Assassination Records Review Board, which oversaw the collection of records relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, from 1994 to 1995.Tunheim was interviewed for the 2021 documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. In 2025 he testified at the second hearing of the House Oversight Committee's "Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets".