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Austin, TX

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Annual Constitution Day Address
Register
Sep 15 2026
Tuesday 5:00 p.m. CDT    

Annual Constitution Day Address

Texas Lawyer Chapter

Austin, TX
Speakers:
Sheldon Gilbert • James C. Ho
Sponsors:
Austin Lawyer Chapter
  • In-Person Event
2026 Texas Chapters Conference
Register
Sep 18 2026
Friday 5:30 p.m. CDT    

2026 Texas Chapters Conference

Arlington, TX
Sponsors:
Dallas Lawyer Chapter • Houston Lawyer Chapter • Austin Lawyer Chapter • Fort Worth Lawyer Chapter • Amarillo Lawyer Chapter • San Antonio Lawyer Chapter • Tyler Lawyer Chapter • Texas Young Lawyer Chapter • Dallas Young Lawyer Chapter • El Paso Lawyer Chapter
  • In-Person Event
Austin Lawyer & Summer Associate Happy Hour
This event has concluded.
Jun 10 2026
Wednesday 4:30 p.m. CDT    

Austin Lawyer & Summer Associate Happy Hour

Austin Lawyer Chapter

Scholz Garten
1607 San Jacinto Blvd
Austin, TX 78701
Sponsors:
Austin Lawyer Chapter
  • In-Person Event
2026 Texas Young Lawyers Summit
This event has concluded.
Jun 5 2026
Friday 7:00 p.m. CDT
CLE 3.50 hours

2026 Texas Young Lawyers Summit

Omni Fort Worth Hotel
1300 Houston St
Fort Worth, TX 76102
Sponsors:
Austin Lawyer Chapter • Fort Worth Lawyer Chapter • Amarillo Lawyer Chapter • Dallas Lawyer Chapter • Houston Lawyer Chapter • Houston Young Lawyer Chapter • Tyler Lawyer Chapter • San Antonio Lawyer Chapter • Dallas Young Lawyer Chapter • Taube American Values Initiative
  • In-Person Event
"Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law" - A Book Talk with Judge Roy Altman
This event has concluded.
Apr 15 2026
Wednesday 11:30 a.m. CDT    

"Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law" - A Book Talk with Judge Roy Altman

Austin Lawyer Chapter & Texas Public Policy Foundation

Texas Public Policy Foundation
901 Congress Avenue
Austin, TX 78701
Speakers:
Roy Kalman Altman • Don R. Willett
Sponsors:
Austin Lawyer Chapter
  • In-Person Event
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Speaker Information
Sheldon Gilbert

Sheldon Gilbert

President and CEO, The Federalist Society

Biography

Sheldon Gilbert is the President and CEO of The Federalist Society. Gilbert has been involved in the conservative and libertarian legal movement since law school, and has served in prominent roles at both nonprofit organizations as well as corporate America.

A longtime constitutional litigator, Gilbert has represented clients through amicus and party briefs in nearly a hundred cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, at both the certiorari and merits stages. Most recently, Gilbert served as Senior Lead Counsel for Strategic Initiatives at Walmart, the world’s largest company, where he led teams providing legal advice related to government enforcement, internal investigations, government relations, public relations, and special projects at the center of law and policy.

Before joining Walmart, Gilbert served as Vice President for Content and Development and Senior Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the National Constitution Center, a congressionally chartered non-partisan center for constitutional education and debate, where he led both fundraising and programming efforts. While at the NCC, Gilbert helped ensure that the Center’s programming and exhibits incorporated constitutional perspectives from experts on both the right and the left, including the launch of the Center’s landmark permanent exhibit on the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments. 

Prior to the National Constitution Center, Gilbert served as the director of the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement (CJE), where he educated the public about the role of the courts and the Constitution, where he frequently hosted discussions and debates on constitutional issues, and often spoke at Federalist Society lawyer and student chapters across the country. 

He was also a litigator with the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he represented the U.S. Chamber in over 400 cases in federal and state courts addressing a wide range of legal issues, from free speech to property rights. 

Gilbert is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School where he helped found a first-of-its-kind National Religious Freedom Moot Court, which hosted law students from across the country to debate important, emerging religious liberty issues. After graduating from GWU, he also taught as a professorial lecturer at the school.

A graduate of the University of Utah, Gilbert is a child of the Mountain West, where he was born in a coal mining town in Utah and raised in Idaho near the Grand Tetons. Before going to law school, Gilbert’s diverse interests led him to work in a wide range of roles, from software development project management for a nonprofit, to working in his University’s radiobiology research lab, to volunteer service in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for his church.

Gilbert is married with four children.

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Speaker Information
James C. Ho

James C. Ho

Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

Biography

James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide.  He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court.  He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications.  His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries.  He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.

Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government.  On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn.  At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel.  He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.

His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.

In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty.  He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader.  He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.

Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999.  Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp.  He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.

 

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Speaker Information
Roy Kalman Altman

Roy Kalman Altman

Judge, United States District Court, Southern District of Florida

Biography

On April 4, 2019, Judge Altman was confirmed to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. At 36, he became the youngest federal district court judge in the country—and the youngest federal judge ever appointed in the Southern District of Florida.

Judge Altman received a BA from Columbia University, where he played quarterback on the football team and pitched for the baseball team—earning All-Ivy honors. Judge Altman received his JD from the Yale Law School, where he was projects editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, the Judge clerked on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for the Honorable Stanley Marcus.

Judge Altman then became a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, where he twice received the Director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys’ Award for Superior Performance by a federal prosecutor. In 2013, Judge Altman was named “Federal Prosecutor of the Year” by the Miami-Dade Chiefs of Police and the Law Enforcement Officers’ Charitable Foundation.

In 2014, Judge Altman became a partner at the Miami law firm of Podhurst Orseck, where he represented the victims of airplane crashes and bank fraud conspiracies.

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Speaker Information
Don R. Willett

Don R. Willett

Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit

Biography

Don Willett serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Before joining the federal bench, Judge Willett served 13 years on the Supreme Court
of Texas. His career spans decades of public service, including roles as legal counsel to
a Texas Attorney General, a Texas Governor, a U.S. Attorney General, and the
President of the United States. 

Raised by a heroic widowed mom in a doublewide trailer in a town of 32, Judge
Willett is his family’s first college graduate. He earned a triple-major B.B.A. from Baylor
University—where he serves on the Board of Regents—and three degrees from Duke
University—where he serves on the Board of Visitors: a J.D. with honors, an A.M. in
political science, and an LL.M. in judicial studies. After law school, he clerked on the
Fifth Circuit and practiced at Haynes and Boone before entering public service.

Judge Willett publishes widely in both leading law reviews and national media, including
The Yale Law Journal, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Wall Street
Journal. The longtime editor-in-chief of Judicature—the Scholarly Journal for Judges, he
holds academic appointments at various law schools and has received more than a
dozen Green Bag honors for “exemplary legal writing.” He was named Distinguished
Jurist of the Year by the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and he is a member of the
American Law Institute and a Life Fellow of the American, Texas, and Austin Bar
Foundations.

A onetime bull rider and professional drummer, Judge Willett was named “Tweeter
Laureate of Texas” in 2015. He is the namesake of Don R. Willett Elementary
School—home of mighty Willett Wranglers—located just a mile from where he grew up.
He and his radiant wife, Tiffany have three children—Jacob, Shane-David, and
Geneviève—plus the family pup, Amicus.

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