We find a correspondence between semiclassical QCD quantized on the light-front and a dual gravity model in anti--de Sitter (AdS) space, thus providing an initial approximation to QCD in its strongly coupled regime. This correspondence -- light-front holography -- leads to a light-front Hamiltonian and relativistic bound-state wave equations that are functions of an invariant impact variable $��$ which measures the separation of the quark and gluonic constituents within hadrons at equal light-front time. The eigenvalues of the resulting light-front Schr��dinger and Dirac equations are consistent with the observed light meson and baryon spectrum, and the eigenmodes provide the light-front wavefunctions, the probability amplitudes describing the dynamics of the hadronic constituents. The light-front equations of motion, which are dual to an effective classical gravity theory, possess remarkable algebraic and integrability properties which are dictated by the underlying conformal properties of the theory. We extend the algebraic construction to include a confining potential while preserving the integrability of the mesonic and baryonic bound-state equations.

17 pages, 2 figures, Invited talk presented at Hadron 2009, The International Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, November 29 - December 4, 2009