Practice Areas

Government relations work fails for predictable reasons. A client hires a lobbying shop that understands the politics but not the statute, or a law firm that understands the statute but has no relationships on the relevant subcommittee. The result is a well-drafted position paper that never reaches a decision-maker, or a warm introduction that collapses the moment staff asks a technical question.

We do not separate those functions. Every engagement begins with a legal assessment of what the client actually needs — a statutory amendment, a report-language directive, an agency interpretation, an appropriations earmark, a waiver, or simply protection from a proposal already moving. That assessment determines who we approach, in what order, and with what ask. Advocacy without a defined legislative or regulatory vehicle is activity, not representation.

• Legislative strategy and vehicle identification
• Bill, amendment, and report-language drafting
• Appropriations and authorization advocacy
• Agency and White House engagement
• Coalition building and third-party validation
• Lobbying Disclosure Act registration and quarterly reporting
• FARA analysis, registration, and supplemental statements
• Gift, ethics, and revolving-door compliance counseling
• Political law and campaign finance compliance
• Legislative and regulatory monitoring with real-time alerts

Congress is not a court. There is no neutral arbiter, no rules of evidence, and no meaningful discovery in the ordinary sense. A committee can compel documents, take a deposition without a judge present, release your client's testimony selectively, and refer the matter to the Department of Justice — all in the same week. Counsel who treat an oversight letter like a civil document request are already behind.

Our work begins with the threshold questions most clients never think to ask: does the committee have jurisdiction over this subject, is there a valid legislative purpose, was the subpoena properly authorized under the chamber's rules, and what accommodation process is available before anyone talks about contempt. Those questions are not academic. They shape the scope of production, they preserve appellate arguments, and they frequently produce a narrowed request without a public fight.

• Response to oversight letters and voluntary requests
• Subpoena compliance, negotiation, and challenges
• Privilege assertions and accommodation negotiation
• Witness preparation for interviews, depositions, and hearings
• Testimony drafting and hearing-day representation
• Immunity and Fifth Amendment strategy
• Contempt exposure analysis and defense
• Coordination with parallel DOJ, IG, and agency proceedings
• Committee referral response
• Communications and reputational coordination

Rulemaking is where most regulatory outcomes are actually decided, and it is where most affected parties show up too late or too generally. A comment letter that says a proposal is burdensome accomplishes nothing. A comment letter that identifies a specific factual assumption the agency got wrong, supplies contrary data, and explains why the agency's chosen alternative fails its own stated objective creates an obligation for the agency to respond — and creates the record that supports a later challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act.

We approach advocacy and litigation as one continuous exercise. From the first comment, we are building toward the argument we would make in a court of appeals: that the agency failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, ignored significant comments, departed from prior policy without explanation, or exceeded its statutory authority. Clients who engage us early frequently never need that argument. Clients who engage us late are grateful it exists.

• Notice-and-comment rulemaking participation
• Technical and legal comment letters supported by data
• Petitions for rulemaking, exemption, and reconsideration
• Administrative Procedure Act challenges
• Statutory drafting and technical corrections
• Committee report language and legislative history development
• Ex parte meetings and OIRA advocacy
• Guidance document and sub-regulatory advocacy
• Congressional Review Act analysis
• Regulatory impact and cost-benefit analysis review

We represent individuals and entities in federal criminal investigations and prosecutions involving fraud, public corruption, obstruction and false statements, money laundering and sanctions, campaign finance and election law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and conspiracy theories that stretch each of those categories further than the statutes were written to reach.

The pre-indictment phase is where we concentrate. That means engaging with the line prosecutor and, when warranted, supervisors and Main Justice; making the declination presentation with the facts and the law the government has not yet seen; negotiating scope on grand jury subpoenas; managing document productions so they do not create new exposure; and preparing clients for proffers with a clear-eyed assessment of what cooperation actually buys and what it costs.

• Pre-indictment representation and declination advocacy
• Grand jury subpoena response and negotiation
• Target, subject, and witness representation
• Proffer and cooperation strategy
• Internal and board-directed investigations
• Search warrant and raid response
• Motions practice, suppression, and dismissal litigation
• Federal jury trials
• Sentencing advocacy and guidelines litigation
• Parallel civil, regulatory, and congressional coordination

We defend individuals and institutions in investigations and enforcement proceedings brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the other federal financial regulators — including the Federal Reserve, FINRA, and state banking and securities authorities.

On the securities side, our work spans the full enforcement lifecycle: responding to informal inquiries and formal orders of investigation, negotiating document and testimony scope, defending witnesses in on-the-record testimony, submitting Wells responses, negotiating remedies and penalties, and litigating in administrative proceedings and federal district court. Matters include disclosure and accounting fraud, insider trading, market manipulation, investment adviser and broker-dealer conduct, custody and marketing rule issues, whistleblower-driven investigations, and books-and-records and internal controls charges.

• SEC investigations, Wells submissions, and enforcement litigation
• FDIC and OCC examination disputes and enforcement defense
• Section 1818 consent orders, CMPs, and prohibition actions
• Bank Secrecy Act and AML examination and enforcement matters
• Individual defense for officers, directors, and registered persons
• Whistleblower and internal complaint investigations
• Compliance program design, testing, and remediation
• Self-reporting and cooperation credit strategy
• Parallel DOJ criminal exposure management
• Administrative proceedings and appeals to the courts of appeals

We represent contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers across the Department of Defense, the military departments, the defense agencies, and the intelligence community. Our work covers the entire relationship: shaping requirements before a solicitation issues, competing for the award, performing under it, disputing what goes wrong, and defending the company's eligibility when the government questions it.

On the front end, we advise on capture strategy within the bounds of the procurement integrity rules, review and negotiate solicitation terms, file agency-level protests and pre-award challenges, and secure clarification of ambiguous specifications before they become performance risk. Organizational conflict of interest mitigation plans, teaming agreements, subcontract flow-downs, and data rights allocations get negotiated with the disputes they will produce clearly in view.

• Contract formation, negotiation, and teaming agreements
• Bid protests: agency, GAO, and Court of Federal Claims
• Contract Disputes Act claims and ASBCA appeals
• Requests for equitable adjustment and termination settlements
• Suspension and debarment defense
• False Claims Act and qui tam defense
• DCAA audit response and cost allowability disputes
• FAR, DFARS, CMMC, and cybersecurity compliance
• Export controls, FOCI mitigation, and CFIUS matters
• Authorization and appropriations advocacy

We represent individuals and the companies, universities, and institutions that need them in matters before the Department of State, U.S. embassies and consulates, and the agencies whose determinations drive consular outcomes. This is a practice built for the difficult cases: refusals under section 221(g) that never resolve, security advisory opinions that sit for years, revocations issued without explanation, and inadmissibility findings under section 212(a) that a client did not know existed until the interview.

Our approach starts with diagnosis. A visa problem is rarely just a visa problem. It usually traces to a prior removal, a criminal record, an alleged misrepresentation, a technology alert list hit, an export control concern, a prior overstay, or a security-related ground the applicant will never be told about directly. We reconstruct the record through FOIA and Privacy Act requests, agency inquiries, and analysis of the prior filings before we decide what relief to pursue.

• Section 221(g) refusals and administrative processing delays
• Security advisory opinion and clearance advocacy
• Visa revocation response and reinstatement
• Inadmissibility analysis under section 212(a)
• Section 212(d)(3) nonimmigrant and immigrant waivers
• Consular supervisory review and Visa Office advocacy
• FOIA and Privacy Act record reconstruction
• Mandamus and APA litigation over agency delay
• Expedite, humanitarian, and national interest requests
• Institutional visa policy advocacy

We represent clients across the administrative state — in licensing and permitting, civil investigative demands, administrative enforcement actions, agency adjudications, debarment and exclusion proceedings, grant and funding disputes, and the judicial review that follows when an agency gets it wrong.

The through-line is the administrative record. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, a reviewing court generally evaluates agency action on the record the agency compiled, under a deferential standard. That means arguments not raised at the agency are typically waived, evidence not submitted is typically excluded, and a client who treats the administrative phase as a formality has usually lost the appeal before filing it. We build the record from the first response letter forward.

• Agency investigations and civil investigative demands
• Administrative enforcement defense and hearings
• Licensing, permitting, and certification matters
• Exclusion, debarment, and program-integrity proceedings
• Grant, cooperative agreement, and funding disputes
• FOIA and Privacy Act requests and litigation
• Administrative Procedure Act challenges to agency action
• Constitutional and civil rights claims against government actors
• State attorney general investigations
• Judicial review in the district courts and courts of appeals

We advise nominees and appointees through every stage of federal service — from the initial vetting questionnaire to the post-employment restrictions that follow them out the door. This is not routine compliance work. A financial disclosure error becomes a false statement allegation; an unresolved conflict becomes a recusal that hollows out the job; a decade-old business relationship becomes a hearing question with a camera on it.

Before nomination, we conduct the vetting the client should do before anyone else does it: a full review of financial holdings, prior positions, public statements, litigation history, tax matters, and household employment. We identify what is disqualifying, what is manageable, and what simply needs an answer prepared. We then handle the paperwork that flows from it — the SF-278 or OGE Form 278e, the SF-86 background investigation questionnaire, and the committee questionnaires, which are frequently more searching than either.

• Pre-nomination vetting and risk assessment
• OGE Form 278e and SF-86 preparation
• Senate committee questionnaire response
• Ethics agreement negotiation and conflict resolution
• Divestiture, blind trust, and certificate of divestiture matters
• Confirmation hearing preparation
• Recusal, screening, and section 208 counseling
• Hatch Act and political activity guidance
• Inspector general and Office of Special Counsel defense
• Section 207 post-employment restriction counseling

Our appellate practice covers direct criminal appeals, civil appeals, petitions for review of agency action, interlocutory and mandamus petitions, and certiorari practice in the Supreme Court of the United States. We appear in the regional courts of appeals and the Federal Circuit, and we regularly serve as appellate counsel in cases tried by other firms.

The first work in any appeal is diagnostic and unsentimental. We read the record — the whole record — and identify which issues were preserved, which are reviewable only for plain error, what standard of review governs each one, and which of them a panel might actually be persuaded to reverse on. Most appellate briefs fail because they raise eight issues instead of two. A client is better served by a candid assessment that the strongest argument is a sentencing issue than by a brief that treats every adverse ruling as equally meritorious.

• Direct criminal appeals in all circuits
• Civil and commercial appeals
• Petitions for review of agency action
• Interlocutory appeals and mandamus petitions
• Petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc
• Supreme Court certiorari and merits practice
• Release, stay, and injunction pending appeal
• Record and issue-preservation consulting during trial
• Amicus brief drafting and coordination
• Appellate opinion assessment and second-opinion review

For most federal defendants, the question is not whether there will be a conviction — the overwhelming majority of federal cases resolve by plea — but what the sentence will be and what can be done afterward. We handle both, as counsel of record and as sentencing and mitigation counsel working alongside trial attorneys.

Guidelines litigation comes first. Offense level calculations, loss and gain figures, role adjustments, relevant conduct, acceptance of responsibility, criminal history categorization, and the enhancements that drive the range are all contestable, and they are frequently contested poorly or not at all. We file substantive objections to the presentence report, litigate disputed facts under Rule 32, and argue departures and variances under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) with the specific record the court needs to justify one.

• Presentence report review and Rule 32 objections
• Guidelines calculation litigation
• Sentencing memoranda and departure and variance advocacy
• Mitigation investigation and expert retention
• Comparative sentencing and disparity analysis
• 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motions
• Compassionate release and § 3582(c) sentence reductions
• Retroactive amendment and Rule 35 practice
• Early termination of supervised release
• BOP designation, programming, and clemency advocacy