A ninth-generation Arkansan, Congressman French Hill has represented Arkansas’s Second Congressional District since January 2015. He serves as the Vice Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and as Chairman of the new subcommittee tasked with overseeing all areas related to digital assets and financial technology. Additionally, he is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Throughout his time in Congress, Rep. Hill has been active in foreign affairs even before he was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Rep. Hill has worked on promoting international religious freedom and has had legislation signed into law that fight the Assad regime in Syria.
He is also one of the Congressional representatives to the United Nations and has traveled numerous times to Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and beyond to strengthen the United States’ relationship with our allies.
In 2021, Rep. Hill and former Rep. Ted Deutch co-founded the Congressional Task Force on American Hostages and Americans Wrongfully Detained Abroad. Rep. Haley Stevens was named the Democrat co-chair after Rep. Deutch’s retirement. The Task Force has held numerous staff and member level activities, and it has been a valuable resource to other members in the House, cosponsoring resolutions and co-signing letters supporting American hostages and wrongful detainees. The Task Force’s leadership was instrumental in passing a resolution on the House floor in support of the hostages held in Gaza by Hamas. Reps. Hill and Stevens also led legislation creating new services and financial support for detainee families and establishing the Hostage and Detainee Proclamation Day and official flag.
Prior to his congressional service, Congressman Hill was founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Delta Trust & Banking Corporation. From 1989 to 1991, he also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Corporate Finance, where one of his key assignments was representing the U.S. as a negotiator in the historic bilateral talks with Japan known as the Structural Impediments Initiative (SII).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rep. Hill led the design of U.S. technical assistance to the emerging economies of eastern and central Europe in the areas of banking and securities. In 1991, at the age of 34, President Bush appointed Rep. Hill to be Executive Secretary to the President’s Economic Policy Council (EPC), where he coordinated all White House economic policy. Prior to his Executive Branch Service, from 1982 until 1984, Rep. Hill served on the staff of then-U.S. Senator John Tower (R-TX), as well as on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs.
Rep. Hill is a magna cum laude graduate in Economics from Vanderbilt University. He and his wife, Martha, have a daughter and a son. The Hill family resides in Little Rock.