George H. Ross

George H. Ross (born January 6, 1928) is executive vice president and senior counsel of the Trump Organization. He is perhaps best known as one of Donald Trump's two advisors on the NBC reality television program The Apprentice; Carolyn Kepcher was the other. On the program, he monitored the progress of the contestants and assisted Trump in determining who should be "fired."

Ross was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York and raised in the Bronx. His father died when he was 16. Ross went to Stuyvesant High School and afterward, he joined the U.S. Army as a crypt analyst for one year and then attended Clemson University and Brooklyn College where he received a B.A. and then earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School. He was admitted to practice in New York State in 1953. After he passed the bar, he worked in the litigation department for Dreyer & Traub. In 1954, he became the in-house counsel for Goldman DeLorenzo (founded by Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo).

In a March 2004 interview with USA Today, Ross said that he has known Trump since the 1970s, when he was a lawyer in a firm with which Trump was negotiating a deal. They became friends, and Ross represented Trump in several major real estate deals in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1996, when Ross had become bored with his legal practice, Trump offered Ross a job. Ross said of his boss, "I think I know his mind as well as anybody else. I know what he wants. He gives it to me, and I can take it from there. He does not micromanage. He deals in broad strokes. I love it." Trump said of Ross, "He's tough, firm but fair, a very brilliant lawyer, and I trust his judgment."

Between 2000 and 2005 Ross was in the supervisory council (Aufsichtsrat) of TD Trump Deutschland AG, planning to purchase or build a Trump Tower in Germany.