Joseph Nye Welch (October 22, 1890 – October 6, 1960) was the head counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation by Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for Communist activities, an investigation known as the Army–McCarthy hearings. Welch was born in Primghar, Iowa, on October 22, 1890, the seventh and youngest child of English immigrants. He attended Grinnell College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1914, then attended Harvard Law School and graduated in 1917, with the second highest grade point average in his graduating class. Welch married Judith Lyndon on September 20, 1917. They had two sons, Joe and Lyndon. Beginning in 1923, Welch was a partner at Hale and Dorr, a Boston law firm, and lived in nearby Walpole, Massachusetts. On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the Army–McCarthy hearings, McCarthy accused Fred Fisher, one of the junior attorneys at Welch's law firm, of associating while in law school with the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which J. Edgar Hoover sought to have the U.S. Attorney General designate as a Communist front organization.