Brandon Williams served aboard a nuclear submarine and represented a New York congressional district for one term, but has said little about his experience in the management of atomic weapons.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked Brandon Williams, a former Navy officer and one-term congressman, to become the keeper of the nation’s arsenal of thousands of nuclear bombs and warheads.
Mr. Trump’s selection is a shift from a tradition in which the people who served as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration typically had deep technical roots or experience in the nation’s atomic complex. What’s unknown publicly is the extent of Mr. Williams’ experience in the knotty intricacies of how the weapons work and how they are kept reliable for decades without ever being ignited.
Terry C. Wallace Jr., a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, expressed surprise at Mr. Trump’s pick.
Dr. Wallace said he had “never met him or had a meeting” with Mr. Williams and characterized him as having “very limited experience” with the N.N.S.A.’s missions, based on his own decades of work in and around the nation’s atomic complex.
Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said Mr. Williams “will be facing an incredibly complex, technical job.”
Mr. Williams did not return calls for comment on his selection by Mr. Trump or his credentials.
The credentials and credibility of whoever becomes N.N.S.A.’s new leader may face close scrutiny because advisers to Mr. Trump have suggested that the incoming administration may propose a restart to the nation’s explosive testing of nuclear arms. That step, daunting both technically and politically, would end U.S. adherence to a global test ban that sought to end decades of costly and destabilizing arms races.