Alberto Reynaldo Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) was the 80th Attorney General of the United States. Gonzales was appointed to the post in February 2005 by President George W. Bush. Gonzales was the first Hispanic and Mexican-American to serve as United States Attorney General. While Bush was Governor of Texas, Gonzales had served as his general counsel, and subsequently he served as Secretary of State of Texas and then on the Texas Supreme Court. From 2001 to 2005, Gonzales served in the Bush Administration as White House Counsel. Amid several controversies and allegations of perjury before Congress, on August 27, 2007 Gonzales announced his resignation as Attorney General, effective September 17, 2007.

Alberto Gonzales was born to a Catholic family in San Antonio, Texas, and raised in Humble, a town outside of Houston. He was the second of eight children born to Pablo and Maria Gonzales. His father, who died in 1982, was a construction worker. According to Gonzales, no immigration documentation exists for three of his grandparents and thus they may have entered and resided in the United States illegally from Mexico.

An honors student at MacArthur High School in unincorporated Harris County, Gonzales enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1973, for a four year term of enlistment, serving two years at Fort Yukon, Alaska before released from active duty to be a cadet at the United States Air Force Academy. Prior to beginning his third year at the academy, which would have caused him to incur a further service obligation, he left the Academy and was released from the enlistment contract, then he transferred to Rice University in Houston, where he was a member of Lovett College and earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1979. He then earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1982.