Christopher James "Chris" Christie (born September 6, 1962) is the 55th Governor of New Jersey. He has been governor since January 2010 and was re-elected for a second term in the 2013 election. Christie is a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election.Born in Newark in 1962, Christie volunteered for the gubernatorial campaign of Republican Thomas Kean when he was fifteen years old. A 1984 graduate of the University of Delaware, Christie earned a J.D.