Jim Cooper
Jim Cooper represented Tennessee’s 4th congressional district from 1983 to 1995, later returning to represent Tennessee’s 5th congressional district from 2003 until 2023. During his time in Congress, he chaired the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and served on several on committees, including the House Budget Committee, the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He authored the 2012 No Budget, No Pay Act, which became law in modified form in 2015. In the interim between his terms in Congress, Cooper co-founded Brentwood Capital Advisors, a Nashville investment bank, and served as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. Since leaving Congress in 2023, he has been a principal at TVV Capital, a private equity firm, while teaching a class on Congress and lawmaking at Vanderbilt Law School.