Director Christopher Wray has named Ryan T. Young as the assistant director of the Directorate of Intelligence at FBI Headquarters in Washington. Mr. Young most recently served as the special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division in the Los Angeles Field Office.
The Directorate of Intelligence has authority and responsibility for all FBI intelligence functions.
Mr. Young began his FBI career as a special agent in 2001 and was assigned to the Miami Field Office to work counterintelligence matters. He was promoted to supervisory special agent in charge of the Cuban Counterintelligence Squad in 2007 and to the chief of internal policy in the Resources Planning Office at Headquarters in 2012.
In 2014, Mr. Young established the Syria-Iraq Task Force in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. He also led a 72-member interagency task force dedicated to countering the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The next year, he was named the assistant special agent in charge of the Intelligence and Administrative branches in the Dallas Field Office.
In 2016, Mr. Young was named the section chief for the Directorate of Intelligence’s Strategic Technology Section. In that position, he was responsible for providing enterprise technology to operational entities addressing the FBI most challenging threats. He also led a team embedded with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Media Exploitation Center.
Mr. Young was promoted to special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division of the Los Angeles Field Office in 2018. He led the FBI’s second largest Joint Terrorism Task Force and weapons of mass destruction investigations in the Los Angeles region and in Southeast Asia. He was also responsible for all crisis management and response assets, including the SWAT Team, the Evidence Response Team, bomb technicians, and other programs.
Mr. Young earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s degree in criminal administration and counseling from Western Oregon State University. Prior to joining the FBI, Mr. Young served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. In 2010, he was awarded the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Counterintelligence Investigation for his work on the case of a Department of State employee and his wife who provided classified U.S. information to the Cuban government for 30 years.
