According to the Legal Times Blog, President-Elect Obama is planning to nominate David Kris as the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. If that’s true, it’s terrific news. Kris is a lawyer’s lawyer and one of the world’s foremost subject-matter experts in national security law. He literally wrote the book, or at least co-wrote it: His treatise, National Security Investigations and Prosecutions, is an extremely impressive work. Plus, Kris has a great deal of practical experience in the area: He was the Associate Deputy Attorney General from 2000 to 2003, where he supervised the government’s implementation of FISA and represented DOJ at the National Security Council. If someone asked me who I thought should head the DOJ’s National Security Division, I would probably have named David Kris. Bravo to President-Elect Obama for such an inspired pick.