By Steve Neavling
Gregory D. Nelsen has been named special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cleveland Office.
Before the appointment, Nelsen was a deputy assistant director of the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division in West Virginia.
Nelsen began working as a special agent for the FBI in 2001, when he was assigned to the Miami Field Office to investigate violent crime, drugs, gangs, and organized crime investigations. In 2006, he was promoted to supervisory special agent and moved to the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD) at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
At WMDD, he was assigned to the CIA’s Counter Terrorist Center/WMD Iraq Unit.
In 2008, Nelsen began training new agent trainees at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.
In 2010, Nelsen became supervisor of human intelligence programs in the Buffalo Field Office in New York. He later supervised Buffalo’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Nelsen moved to the Pittsburgh Field Office in 2016 and served as the assistant special agent in charge (ASAC) of the Criminal Branch and the Pennsylvania resident agencies.
In 2017, he transitioned to ASAC over Pittsburgh’s cyber and intelligence programs.
Nelsen became section chief of the CJIS Division’s National Threat Operations Section in 2019.
In 2020, he was promoted to deputy assistant director of the CJIS Division’s Operational Programs Branch.
Before joining the FBI, Nelsen was a police officer with the Virginia Beach Police Department in Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.
