Assistant Secretaries of State
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Notice posted on January 12, 2024.
Last
updated March 14, 2024.
The Foreign Service Act of 1924 (May 24, 1924; 43 Stat. 146) abolished numerical titles for Assistant Secretaries of State while authorizing the appointment of a fourth Assistant Secretary. Between 1924 and 1944, one Assistant Secretary was in charge of administration, budgets, and finance. Duties of the others varied with each appointment, including at various times legal affairs, consular affairs, economic affairs, and Inter-American affairs. On Dec 8, 1944, an Act of Congress (58 Stat. 798) increased the number of Assistant Secretaries to six. Ever since the Department’s reorganization of Dec 20, 1944, Assistant Secretaries of State have received functional or geographic designations. Unless otherwise specified, they have been commissioned as “an Assistant Secretary of State.”
- Alvey Augustus Adee (1924)
- Wilbur John Carr (1924–1933)
- Leland Harrison (1924–1927)
- Joshua Butler Wright (1924–1927)
- John Van Antwerp MacMurray (1924–1925)
- Robert Edwin Olds (1925–1927)
- William Richards Castle Jr. (1927–1929)
- Francis White (1927–1933)
- Nelson Trusler Johnson (1927–1929)
- William Richards Castle Jr. (1930–1931)
- James Grafton Rogers (1931–1933)
- Harvey Hollister Bundy (1931–1933)
- Wilbur John Carr (1933–1937)
- Raymond Charles Moley (1933)
- Benjamin Sumner Welles (1933)
- Harry Franklin Payer (1933)
- Jefferson Caffery (1933)
- Robert Walton Moore (1933–1937)
- Francis Bowes Sayre (1933–1939)
- Benjamin Sumner Welles (1933–1937)
- George Strausser Messersmith (1937–1940)
- Hugh Robert Wilson (1937–1938)
- Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (1938–1944)
- Henry Francis Grady (1939–1941)
- Samuel Miller Breckinridge Long (1940–1944)
- Dean Gooderham Acheson (1941)
- Gardiner Howland Shaw (1941–1944)