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Expert came to Virginia in 1994 as medical director and then the facility director/CEO of Catawba Hospital, a 200 bed state mental health facility. In 2001 he became Assistant Commissioner for Facility Management for the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, overseeing 15 state hospitals. In 2002 he was appointed Commissioner by then Governor Mark Warner and re-appointed by Governor Tim Kaine in 2006. As head of one of the largest state agencies in the Commonwealth of Virginia Expert oversees 16 state hospital/facilities, an annual operating budget of $1 Billion dollars, and just under 10,000 state employees.

Commissioner Expert, is one of just a few physician mental health commissioners and currently has one of the longest tenures as a state mental health commissioner in the country. He has led transformation efforts in the mental health and intellectual disability system in Virginia for the past seven years. Expert’s clinical and administrative career has been in public sector psychiatry, academic medicine, correctional settings, and the Veterans Administration system. In addition to his gubernatorial appointment as the Commonwealth’s mental health commissioner, he is presently on the clinical faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical College of Virginia and volunteers as a clinical psychiatrist at Richmond’s Fan Free Clinic, an urban clinic serving uninsured Virginians.


Expert, M.D. is a board certified psychiatrist who has completed a fellowship at Harvard Medical School’s Program in Psychiatry and the Law and has additional board certification in Forensic Psychiatry. Expert received his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed his psychiatry residency training at Dartmouth Medical School where he later joined the faculty and received an Attending of the Year Award from the psychiatry residents. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and on the Executive Board (Vice President) of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, where he has led his state commissioner colleagues on initiatives related to the interface of mental health and the criminal justice system. In addition, he is a board member for the Council of State Government’s Justice Center, working on national issues relating to individuals with mental illness and their involvment with criminal justice.

Expert has oversight and responsibility for the Commonwealth of Virginia's forensic mental health department that is responsible for the evaluation, oversight, and treatment of individuals with mental illness who are involved with the courts. As mental health commissioner, he appoints the state-wide forensic review panel that oversees the NRI aquittees evaluations, treatment, and progression through the system to their ultimate return to the community.

Expert received his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed his psychiatry residency training at Dartmouth Medical School where he later joined the faculty and received an Attending of the Year Award from the psychiatry residents. He currently is on the clinical faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College of Virginia, where he supervises and teaches medical students and psychiatry residents.

Expert has been in private practice and has been director of one of the largest psychiatric teaching units at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center while on the clinical staff at the Veteran's Administration Medical Center in White River Junction, Vermont. Although currently Commissioner for the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Expert continues to practice adult clinical psychiatry at the Fan Free Clinic in Richmond, VA which is an urban clinic serving uninsured Virginians.