James Baker, a national security lawyer and policy adviser, will succeed Professor William Banks as Syracuse University’s director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism starting this fall, SU announced Monday.

Baker, a jurist, scholar and law and policy practitioner, will also join the College of Law and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as a professor in fall 2018, according to an SU News release.

The INSCT was established in 2003 and is now a collaboration between Maxwell and the College of Law. The institute does research, teaching, public service and policy analysis in the fields of counterterrorism, national security and international security, according to its website.

Banks, who retired from his position as an SU faculty member in 2017, has served as the INSCT’s director since its inception.

Baker has received honors from the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Army Command, per the release. He’s served in the U.S. Marine Corps, worked for the U.S. Department of State and served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces for 15 years, the last four as chief judge.

Baker, a Yale University alumnus, has also taught at Yale and the Georgetown University Law Center. Baker was a Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at MIT’s Center for International Studies from 2017-18.