Definition of "chief of staff" []

• The ranking officer of the U.S. Army or Air Force, responsible to the secretary of his or her branch and to the President. (noun)
• The senior military staff officer at the division level or higher. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In comments apparently designed to reassure the financial markets, Mr Clegg's chief of staff Danny Alexander stressed that the centrepiece of any deal would be a plan to tackle Britain's record £163 billion deficit."
• "Aside from my disillusionment on discovering that a congressional chief of staff for a freshman congressman has pretty much zero decision-making power and spends the majority of his time getting yammered at by anyone who feels like it, and aside from my disappointment with Washington in general, I was personally pissed at Bill Martini by then."
• "Obeid and Wali were taken to Cairo's Tora prison, where a string of former top regime figures — including another former prime minister, ruling party chief and chief of staff — are already languishing, facing similar corruption investigations."