James Peery retires from lab director position at Sandia

James Peery, who has a tenure of over 30 years at National Nuclear Security Administration laboratories, announced his retirement last week, Sandia National Laboratories confirmed to the Monitor Tuesday.

Peery served as lab director for Sandia National Laboratories from January 2020 to present, according to his bio on Sandia’s website. A spokesperson for Sandia told the Monitor in an email that Peery announced his retirement Oct. 9 to Sandia’s workforce, but would continue to serve as Sandia’s director through April 30, 2025.

Prior to his appointment, he was associate laboratory director for national security sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. His role included overseeing programs that work to support national security missions at the Department of Energy, including working to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Prior to his role at Oak Ridge, Peery was Sandia’s vice president for defense systems and assessments from March 2015 to April 2017, his bio said. He worked as director of Sandia’s Information Systems Analysis Center from April 2010 to March 2015, and worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in several positions from 2002 to 2007.

Peery’s career at Sandia began in 1990. That year, he also got a Ph.D in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M University, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Sandia designs the non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons. 

The lab employs about 11,500 contractors and federal workers, most of whom are located at the lab’s main campus in Albuquerque. Others are located at the lab’s smaller satellite campus near the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., outside the San Francisco Bay area. Sandia also operates the Tonopah Test Range for the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Air Force’s Nellis Range, and the Kauai Test Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, which tests missile systems aboard suborbital rockets.