Jim Avila

Award-winning journalist Jim Avila has been named Senior Law and Justice Correspondent for ABC News.

Avila will take a lead role in the coverage of trials and justice issues, utilizing the resources of ABC News' respected Law and Justice Unit. He will continue to be a correspondent for "20/20," will contribute to "Primetime" and will also report for all other ABC News platforms.

Avila joined ABC News "20/20" as a correspondent for the fall 2004 season. Avila will report on a wide range of stories, which will include his unique brand of investigations.

Avila joins ABC from NBC News, where he served as National Correspondent for "Nightly News" since January 2000, covering a range of domestic issues including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath and the D.C. sniper shootings. He has also reported from Afghanistan and Iraq, during which time he filed from inside NBC's Baghdad hotel compound during and after it was bombed by terrorists.

Since 1997, Avila has averaged 130 reports a year on "Nightly News," which was the highest number for any minority in broadcast history, according to Joe Foote at Arizona State's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Before being named National Correspondent at NBC, Avila was a Chicago bureau correspondent. During his time at NBC, he covered high-profile events including the shooting tragedies in Littleton, Colo., Jonesboro, Ark., and Paducah, Kentucky.

Prior to NBC, Avila was the investigative reporter for KNBC in Los Angeles from 1994 to 1996. At KNBC, he was the principal reporter on the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, helping the station earn the 1995 Golden Mike Award and a 1996 Emmy Award.

Before joining at KNBC, he was a general assignment reporter at WBBM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Chicago. During this time, Avila covered a variety of news stories of local, national and international importance, including the Persian Gulf War from both Saudi Arabia and Tel Aviv. Among other notable stories he covered at WBBM-TV were the Beirut War, the TWA hijacking, the Nicaraguan civil war and the Mexican earthquake.

From 1980 to 1984, Avila was a general assignment reporter for WLS, the ABC owned station in Chicago. Previously, he was a weekend anchor and the San Jose bureau chief for KPIX in San Francisco from 1976 to 1980.