James Draper St. Clair (April 14, 1920 – March 10, 2001) was an American lawyer, who practiced law for many years in Boston with the firm of Hale & Dorr. He was the chief legal counsel for President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Early life James St. Clair was born on April 14, 1920, in Akron, Ohio. He was raised in a number of Midwest cities, including Erie, Pennsylvania, Buffalo, New York, and Albany, New York. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois in 1941. From 1942 to 1945 was an officer in the United States Navy. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1947 and joined the firm of Hale & Dorr two years later. He became a senior partner in 1954. Legal career Army–McCarthy hearings St. Clair first gained notice while assisting Joseph Welch in the Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954. St. Clair selected Fred Fisher to assist with the case. Fisher was sent home before the hearings began after Welch confirmed his prior membership in the National Lawyers Guild, an organization accused of Communist sympathies. Joseph McCarthy attacked Fisher's membership in the group, which led to Welch's famous line "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" In 1955, St. Clair assisted with the defense of Wendell H. Furry, a Harvard physics professor who was charged with Contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before McCarthy and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 1960s and 70s In 1961, he was hired by Massachusetts Governor John A. Volpe to prepare removal proceedings against Boston police commissioner Leo J. Sullivan. The following year he handled the removal proceedings against state waterways director Rodolphe G. Bessette following Bessette's indictment for perjury and conspiracy. In 1967 he defended Frederick Wiseman when the Massachusetts government attempted to censor Titicut Follies, Wiseman's documentary about the conditions of Bridgewater State Hospital. In 1968 he defended William Sloane Coffin, a Yale chaplain who was found guilty of treason for advising students to avoid the draft (Coffin's counsel during the appeals process, Arthur Goldberg, got the conviction overturned). In 1972, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appointed St. Clair and Raymond Young to investigate the complaints against Judge Jerome P. Troy. During the early 1970s, St. Clair served as the chief counsel for the Boston School Committee in a lawsuit that led to court ordered