Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Jim Petro" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Jim Petro
46thAttorney General of Ohio
In office January 5, 2003 – January 8, 2007
Governor	Bob Taft
Preceded by	Betty Montgomery
Succeeded by	Marc Dann
Auditor of Ohio
In office January 9, 1995 – January 5, 2003
Governor	George Voinovich Nancy Hollister Bob Taft
Preceded by	Thomas E. Ferguson
Succeeded by	Betty Montgomery
Member of theOhio House of Representatives from the6th district
In office January 2, 1987 – December 31, 1990
Preceded by	Jeff Jacobs
Succeeded by	Ed Kasputis
In office January 3, 1981 – May 22, 1984
Preceded by	Jim Betts
Succeeded by	Jeff Jacobs
Personal details
Born	(1948-10-25)October 25, 1948 (age 77) Brooklyn, Ohio, U.S.
Party	Republican
Alma mater	Denison University Case Western Reserve University School of Law

James M. Petro (born October 25, 1948) is an American lawyer and politician of theRepublican Party who served as theAttorney General of Ohio. Previously, Petro also served asOhio State Auditor and he was a candidate for the Republican nomination forGovernor of Ohio during the2006 Ohio primaries, but lost toKen Blackwell.

Petro was born October 25, 1948, inBrooklyn, Ohio. A Brooklyn High School graduate, he attendedDenison University inGranville, Ohio, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree and joined theLambda Chi Alphafraternity. He later earned hisJ.D. degree fromCase Western Reserve University School of Law inCleveland, Ohio. Petro served as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney forFranklin County as a trial lawyer responsible for felony prosecutions, and then as Assistant Director of Law for the city of Cleveland, Ohio. After starting his private practice, Petro became prosecuting attorney for the city ofRocky River, Ohio.

Petro began his political career in 1977 when he was elected to the Rocky River city council, and later served as the director of the city. In 1980, he was elected to theOhio House of Representatives. He served four years as a state representative.

In 1991, Petro became County Commissioner forCuyahoga County; during his four-year term he was President of the board for a year.

Petro was elected Ohio Auditor in 1994 and re-elected in 1998, serving two terms from 1995 to 2003. As Auditor he served as the chief inspector and supervisor of public offices in the state; the office is the largest state auditing agency in the United States, second in size only to the United StatesGovernment Accountability Office.

In November 2002, Petro was elected the Ohio attorney general, serving from 2003 to 2007. In 2005, Petro became the first Ohio attorney general to argue a case in front of theUnited States Supreme Court in over thirty years; he won the case by a vote of nine to zero. As Ohio's Attorney General he successfully defended the law banning late term abortions in the state. As attorney general, Petro also launched an effort that added 210,000 criminal DNA profiles from Ohio to the nationalCombined DNA Index System (CODIS).

On January 30, 2006, Petro announced thatJoy Padgett would be his running mate for the Governor's position. Padgett, a Republican state senator fromCoshocton, Ohio, was selected after Petro's first running mate, Hamilton County Commissioner Phil Heimlich, dropped out of the campaign to run for re-election as Commissioner of Hamilton County.

Petro was defeated in the May 2, 2006, primary byKen Blackwell, Ohio's then-Secretary of State.

Petro became the first attorney general in the country to intervene in a case spearheaded by theInnocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic that pioneered the use ofDNA testing to prove wrongful conviction. The case exoneratedClarence Elkins, a family man with no prior criminal record who had been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his mother-in-law.^{[citation needed]}

After his involvement in subsequent high-profile cases including Dean Gillispie. Petro and his wife Nancy co-authoredFalse Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent, which raises questions regarding the fairness of the American justice system and identifies flaws in how police and prosecutors handle evidence, especially in capital cases. The book also examines how the authors believe DNA evidence has played a critical role in exonerating convicted people and highlight what the authors call the unreliability of eyewitness testimony.^{[citation needed]}

Petro was appointed chancellor of theOhio Board of Regents in March 2011 by GovernorJohn Kasich. Chancellor Petro leads theUniversity System of Ohio, which is one of the largest comprehensive systems of public higher education in the nation. The University System of Ohio bears the primary responsibility for raising Ohioans' educational attainment.^[1]

• Petro, Jim; Petro, Nancy (2011).False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent. Kaplan Publishing.ISBN 978-1-60714-467-0.

• 1948 births
• Case Western Reserve University School of Law alumni
• Chancellors of the University System of Ohio
• Denison University alumni
• Living people
• Republican Party members of the Ohio House of Representatives
• Ohio attorneys general
• People from Brooklyn, Ohio
• Politicians from Cleveland
• Ohio state auditors
• 20th-century members of the Ohio General Assembly

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• BLP articles lacking sources from October 2025
• All BLP articles lacking sources
• Use mdy dates from January 2016
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from August 2021