Jay Karnes

Jay Karnes — Biography

Los Angeles police detective Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach in the FX crime drama The Shield is the role American television and film actor Jay Karnes is best known for. He kept it for the whole run of the show from 2002 to 2008. In the years since, he has worked mostly in television as a supporting and guest actor.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1989. In the mid-1990s he was a company member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, playing major roles in plays such as Love's Labours Lost and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Some of his early starring film parts were in The Joyriders (1999) and The Next Best Thing (2000). After The Shield he played ATF agent Josh Kohn in Sons of Anarchy, created by Kurt Sutter of The Shield. The same year, 2008, he appeared in Chasing 3000 and in Broken Angel (Meleğin Sırları), a Turkish production shot in the United States, in which he played Michael Levy.

He went on to play Tyler Brennan in Burn Notice (2009-2010), Secretary of Defense William Curry in Last Resort (2012), supervising agent Gerry Silvo in the pilot of Graceland (2013) and Agent Carter in Gang Related (2014), and guested on V, House, Criminal Minds, Scandal and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 2018 he played Craig in The Crossing. He is married to the actress Julia Campbell, and they have two children.