Robert Wilkie
10th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Robert Leon Wilkie Jr. (born August 2, 1962) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the 10th United States secretary of veterans affairs from 2018 to 2021, during the first Trump administration. He was previously Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness from November 2017 to July 2018. A Naval intelligence officer in the Reserve, he was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs in the administration of President George W. Bush.
Early life and education
Wilkie was born in Frankfurt, West Germany, and attended Salisbury Cathedral School in England and Reid Ross High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The son of a career Army artillery officer, he grew up in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Wilkie received his B.A. degree from Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He received a J.D. degree from Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans in 1988 and an LL.M. degree in international and comparative law from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.
Wilkie served in the United States Navy Reserve; he is currently in the United States Air Force Reserve, where he holds the rank of Colonel.
Career
Congressional staffer and George W. Bush administration official
Wilkie was a longtime Republican congressional staffer. He began his career on Capitol Hill as counsel to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and later became legislative director for Representative David Funderburk.
“Robert Wilkie” enters the record as 10th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robert, Wilkie and 10th can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7351064. VIAF identifies the subject as 2005160245385152640001. The Library of Congress control number is no2011190219. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 2018, 2021 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Wilkie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.