Charles E. Samuels, Jr. (born June 7, 1966) is the 8th and former director of the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the first African-American to be appointed to that post. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he received his B.S. in Criminal Justice in 1987 and in 2012 received the school's Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.As director, he was responsible for the oversight and management of the Bureau of Prisons, which employs more than 39,000 staff and confines over 200,000 inmates under jurisdiction of the agency. As a career public administrator, he was appointed director of the federal agency on December 21, 2011 by Attorney General Eric Holder, and is the eighth director since the BOP's establishment in 1930.