Dr. Jeffery Ventrella

Dr. Jeffery J. Ventrella is the Director and Chair of the truthXchange Fellowship. Chair of the truthXchange Board for years, Jeff comes to truthXchange with a wealth of experience that will serve the ministry’s vision for truthXchange 2.0. Following a successful career as a “partner” serving clients in “Big Law” for 15 years, Jeff then served for nearly 23 years as Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Training at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), including serving on ADF’s Executive Team for many years.

After joining ADF in 2000, he designed the curriculum for a number of ADF training programs, including the Blackstone Legal Fellowship (BLF), a unique training and professional development program for law students. He also helped design ADF International’s Areté Academy Europe, Areté Academy Asia, and Areté Latin America, which provide training for exceptional international advocates and cultural leaders who are on a path to future leadership in a variety of disciplines.

Academically, Ventrella has diverse experience: He has served as a research Fellow and a member of an ad hoc graduate thesis committee for the Department of Philosophy and Constitutional Law at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law for Trinity Law School, principally teaching Constitutional Law. He has been appointed as a Senior Lecturing Fellow for Regent Law as well as Extended Faculty for High Point University’s Kahn School of Law. And, he continues to publish both popular and scholarly pieces and lectures widely.

He is also a distinguished Fellow of Law and Culture for the Center for Cultural Leadership and a Fellow with the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. In 2014, TruthXchange appointed him Senior Fellow. As an approved speaker for the Federalist Society, he serves as an appointed member of the society’s executive committee – guiding its Religious Liberties Practice Group. Dr. Ventrella is also an elected member of The Philadelphia Society.

His book The Cathedral Builder: Pursuing Cultural Beauty (2007) is part of the BLF Core Curriculum Project. In addition, he also edited the Fellowship’s Curriculum and conceptualized and served as founding curator for ADF’s speech journal, Clarion. He is the author of numerous published monographs and has contributed to and/or edited about ten books.

Ventrella received a bachelor’s degree in music education, magna cum laude, from the University of Northern Colorado, where he specialized in trumpet performance. He holds a Doctorate (Ph.D.) in church and state studies from Whitefield Theological Seminary and earned his juris doctorate from the University of California Hastings College of the Law, where he served as Production Editor of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly.

He has practiced law since 1985 and is a member of the state bar of Idaho serving on its Professionalism & Ethics Section as well as its Diversity Section. He is also admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Married since 1986, he and his wife enjoy their five adult children.