James Oliphant has covered politics, government, and legal affairs for most of his journalism career.  Before joining National Journal, he was a correspondent covering the 2012 presidential campaign for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, and also worked as a congressional and legal affairs reporter for those newspapers. He is a former editor-in-chief of Legal Times in Washington, where he also won awards for feature writing, and has been a contributing editor to American Lawyer magazine.  He began his career as a staff writer for the Miami Daily Business Review in Miami, Fla., where, as he likes to say, he lived on South Beach before it was cool. He holds a J.D. from the Ohio State University Morrill College of Law.