ARLINGTON, Va. –
Special Agent Gregory A. Scovel Jr. was sworn in as the NCIS Deputy Director during a ceremony on April 21 at the Pentagon. The Department of the Navy Chief of Staff, Mr. Jon Harrison, presided over the ceremony with NCIS Director Omar Lopez, retired NCIS acting Director Gregory A. Scovel Sr., and other DON leaders in attendance.
Deputy Director Scovel serves as the agency’s Chief Operating Officer, assisting the Director and overseeing all NCIS investigative, operational, and management and operational support functions.
In this position, Deputy Director Scovel provides strategic management and direction for criminal investigations and operations, as well as global counterterrorism, protective operations and counterintelligence investigations and operations, including those involving espionage, terrorism, compromise, technology transfer, cyber operations, force protection activities, insider threat programs, and threats to research, development, and acquisition programs.
He previously served as the acting Deputy Director of Operations from 2024 to 2025, the Executive Assistant Director for the National Security Directorate from 2021 to 2024, the Special Agent in Charge of the Norfolk Field Office from 2020 to 2021, and the Assistant Director for NSD from 2019 to 2020.
Deputy Director Scovel’s previous leadership assignments with NCIS include Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Operations from 2018 to 2019, Department of the Navy Counterintelligence Coordinating Authority from 2018 to 2019, and Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the NCIS Office of Special Projects and Chief of the Virtual Operations Center from 2017 to 2018. Deputy Director Scovel was recalled to active-duty military service in 2018 to serve as the conventional forces forward Joint Force Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Staff Element (J-2X), Operation Inherent Resolve, Baghdad, Iraq.
Prior to joining NCIS in 2007, he served for nine years as a U.S. Naval Aviator, with deployments in support of Operation Southern Watch, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He completed over 1,000 hours as pilot-in-command and over 100 carrier-arrested landings in the C-2A Greyhound. He retired as an Intelligence Officer from the Navy Reserve in 2018.
Deputy Director Scovel earned a Master of Business Administration from Virginia Tech and a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs from James Madison University.