• Office Sought: Representative, Texas (10)
• Birth Date: Jan. 14, 1962
• Occupation: Attorney, Former Federal Prosecutor
• Religion: Catholic
• Web site: http://mccaulforcongress.com

Education

• Harvard University, Fellowship
• St. Mary's University, JD
• St. Mary's University School of Law, JD
• Trinity University, BS
• Trinity University, BS

Mike McCaul grew up in Dallas and attended Trinity University in San Antonio, earning a bachelor's degree in business and political science in 1984. During the summers, he worked construction-type jobs, tying steel rebar for building foundations.

"It was hard work," he recalled. "I thought it built character and it certainly motivated me to stay in college."

He enrolled in law school at St. Mary's University, also in San Antonio, graduating in 1987. He joined the Texas attorney general's office as a member of the honors program. He then applied in 1990 with the Justice Department, working there until 1999.

He rose to chief of the terrorism and national security section for the Western District of Texas.

He returned to the Texas attorney general's office, hired by then-Attorney General John Cornyn as deputy. He served on the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000, the transition team of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in 2002, and has been a member of Gov. Rick Perry's anti-crime commission.

In 2002, he spent a summer in the senior executive fellows program at Harvard.McCaul has been statewide project director for Texas Exile, a gun violence reduction initiative that involves the cooperation of the U.S. Attorneys and District Attorneys across Texas. He also was instrumental in the formation of the Texas Internet Bureau to combat cybercrime and online fraud.

As a federal prosecutor, McCaul fought public corruption and investigated the campaign finance scandal involving the People's Republic of China. He was the lead prosecutor in the federal case against Johnny Chung, a Taiwan-born businessman sentenced to probation and 3,000 hours of community service as part of a plea bargain for making almost $30,000 in illegal contributions to Democrats, including $20,000 to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.

Chung donated almost $400,000 to Democratic candidates and causes between 1994 and 1996, but the money was returned after questions arose about its legality. Chung admitted to using "straw donors" to funnel money to the Clinton-Gore campaign and then reimbursing them.

McCaul met his wife, Linda, in Washington while she was working as an oceanographer, tracking Soviet submarines. The couple has five children.