" Paul C. Harris, a former Albemarle County Republican delegate, is leaving the U.S. Department of Justice later this month to join giant defense contractor Raytheon Co. as senior counsel in the Patriot and Tomahawk missile manufacturer’s Arlington office.

Harris, 39, is leaving the Justice Department after spending two years in Washington, the past year as a deputy associate attorney general.

The first black Republican elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in more than a century, Harris won landslide elections from Albemarle in 1997 and 1999 before resigning two years ago to become a deputy assistant attorney general.

"It’s been a very exciting two years here at the department. I have no regrets," he said Monday. "It’s been a very steep learning curve here at the Department. At times, I think it’s been vertical."

The first speaker at President Bush’s 2000 nominating convention in Philadelphia, Harris said he will join Raytheon in July, a move that should allow him to attend GOP political functions again and "perhaps say a few words."

He will be working with the company’s homeland security group on the 20th floor of Raytheon’s Rosslyn offices overlooking Washington. "It will give me an opportunity to do some things that I really enjoy, for example interfacing with the Pentagon," he said.

Harris, who started his first Justice Department job at a salary of $131,500, would not comment on the size of his new corporate salary, except to say, "You can speculate." A close political friend of the former delegate said the new job should provide Harris with a large enough salary to allow him to establish some financial security for his family before he reenters the political arena.

Raytheon makes more than two-thirds of its sales to the federal government and had 2002 sales of $16.8 billion. The company employs more than 76,000 people worldwide.

Harris, who lives in Manassas with his wife, Monica, and their three children, said he commutes to work on the Virginia Railway Express commuter train. He converted recently to Roman Catholicism, the lifelong church of his wife and children.

Del. Mitchell Van Yahres, D-Charlottesville, said the Raytheon senior counsel position "sounds like a good job. I think he’s got a very good political future."

"He’s very well liked in the Republican community, but he’s also got a lot of competition in the Republican community," where nominations are more fiercely contested than ever, Van Yahres said.

The Democrat, who served with Harris during four House sessions, said the Republican’s new job "looks like it’s big bucks. He’s in the major corporate world now — bigtime."

Harris said he new position will provide him with "the corporate phase of my learning curve," including a range of diverse legal issues from import-export law to international contracts and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, June 17, 2003)

Contact Bob Gibson at (434) 978-7243 or bgibson@dailyprogress.com.

Editor's Note: For more on Raytheon, see Revamped Patriot Missle Would Get First Battlefield Test, Shop Till You Drop Bombs , Grand Oily Party , Texas State Society Black Tie & Boots Inaugural Ball 2001 , Keeping Alive the Spirit of the Vietnam War Protest , When Precision Bombing Isn't , Feingold Calls on Democrats to Get Corporate Money Out of the Convention , Patriotic Tourism , and Cyberdefense .