Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Former General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Alden Abbott is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center. Prior to joining Mercatus, he served as the General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As the Commission’s chief legal officer and adviser, he represented the agency in court and provides legal counsel to the Commission and its bureaus and offices.
Prior to rejoining the FTC in April 2018, Mr. Abbott served in executive positions at the Heritage Foundation (2014-2018) and BlackBerry (2012-2014). He also held a variety of senior positions in the U.S. federal government (in the FTC, the Commerce Department, and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the Antitrust Division).
He speaks French, Spanish, and Italian.
Associate, Latham & Watkins LLP
Charlie Beller is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins.
Mr. Beller represents companies in antitrust and competition matters, including merger clearance, antitrust litigation, government investigations, and corporate counseling.
He advises clients on a variety of antitrust issues, with specific experience in the defense, aviation, chemicals, and music and book publishing industries.
Mr. Beller maintains an active pro bono practice, providing tax-exempt counseling to non-profit institutions. He has also supported successful litigation to overturn state occupational licensing restrictions.
Mr. Beller serves as a Young Lawyer Representative on the American Bar Association (ABA) Antitrust Section’s Pricing Conduct Committee, and as a co-editor of the Section’s forthcoming Price Discrimination Handbook. He authored updates to the Air Transportation chapter of Antitrust Law Developments.
Mr. Beller was previously a management consultant in Germany supporting companies with pricing strategy.
Vice President and Director of Legal Advocacy, American Antitrust Institute
Kathleen Bradish has been an antitrust lawyer, in both private practice and government, for almost 20 years. She has extensive experience with conduct cases and mergers, with particular experience in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors, and in international competition matters. Ms. Bradish joined the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb after law school and was appointed counsel in 2014. From mid-2015 to late 2018, Ms. Bradish was Assistant Chief and International Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Antitrust Division.
At DOJ, Ms. Bradish served as deputy chief handling the Antitrust Division’s international relations, representing the Division’s views on antitrust enforcement abroad. She advised case teams on issues affecting cooperation with foreign antitrust enforcers and provided guidance to leadership on competition issues arising abroad and affecting the United States. Ms. Bradish also represented the Antitrust Division in trade issues, including leading the negotiations of competition chapters in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Ms. Bradish returned to Cleary Gottlieb as Counsel in 2018.
Counsel, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP; Senior Competition Counsel, TechFreedom
Bilal Sayyed represents clients before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) in significant merger, civil and criminal antitrust matters. A significant portion of his practice involves representing investment funds on antitrust and Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act compliance matters; he has also provided expert witness services related to HSR compliance. Bilal also counsels clients before the FTC in consumer protection and privacy investigations. He maintains an active amicus and appellate brief writing practice in antitrust litigation and antitrust merger matters.
Prior to joining Cadwalader, Bilal was the Director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning (OPP) (2018-2021). In that role, he provided legal and policy advice to the Chairman and Commissioners on antitrust and consumer protection matters and worked closely with the senior and career leadership of the FTC’s Bureaus of Competition, Consumer Protection, and Economics. Bilal previously served as an Attorney Advisor to FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris from 2001 to 2004. In that role, Bilal advised the Chairman on matters involving a wide spectrum of industries, including chemical and mining, petroleum and natural gas, health care and pharmaceutical, defense and transportation, gaming, various consumer products and retail operations, and professional associations and standard-setting organizations.
Bilal has taught antitrust and competition law at the George Mason University School of Law since 2011.
Bilal received his B.A. from Case Western Reserve University, and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and the State of New York, as well as before the U.S. District Courts for the District of Colorado and the District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Fifth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bilal is the host of Rethinking Antitrust, a podcast published by TechFreedom that examines the economics, institutions, law, legislation, and policy goals of antitrust enforcement.
Professor of Clinical Law, Brooklyn Law School
Jodi S. Balsam is Professor of Clinical Law at Brooklyn Law School and a nationally recognized expert on Sports Law. She directs the BLS Sports Law Clinic and Sports Law Externship Program. She teaches Sports Law at both BLS and NYU School of Law, and has also taught the subject at New York Law School, University of New Hampshire School of Law, Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany, Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, Hungary, and the MESGO Executive Masters Program in Global Sport Governance. Professor Balsam has served as an arbitrator for the National Collegiate Athletic Association on complex infractions cases, and now serves as a neutral for FAIR Sports, which hears cases involving college athletics.
Professor Balsam frequently writes and speaks on sports law topics, including as co-author of Weiler’s Sports and the Law, a leading casebook in the field. Her publications and presentations have addressed antitrust challenges to sports leagues and organizing bodies, sports trademarks, athletes’ rights of free expression and name/image/likeness exploitation, sports gambling and integrity, sports league governance, and the role of the sports agent. She frequently appears in the media on legal issues in sports, including NBC Sports/The Golf Channel, ESPN, Law360 Sports and Betting, The Athletic, Front Office Sports, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. She is on the editorial boards of Law360-Sports & Betting, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, and the international sports law newsletter LawInSport.
Before joining academia, Professor Balsam was the National Football League's Counsel for Operations and Litigation, where she managed litigation in all areas of law, oversaw a variety of policy and operational matters, negotiated and drafted contracts for League special events including the Super Bowl, and administered the League's internal dispute resolution processes and compliance program. Prior to the NFL she was a litigator with the New York office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she represented sports and entertainment clients in antitrust matters and complex commercial litigation. She served as a law clerk for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Charles Brieant of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A graduate of Yale College, Professor Balsam received her law degree from NYU School of Law.
Associate, Baker McKenzie
Kaitlyn Barry is an Associate at Baker McKenzie. Prior to joining the firm, she served as a trial attorney at the United States Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. She previously clerked for Judge Kurt Engelhardt at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Ron Clark at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Kaitlyn is a 2019 graduate of the University of Houston Law Center. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was an NCAA Division I varsity student-athlete on the Longhorns cross country and track teams.
Ohio Deputy Attorney General for Major Litigation, Office of the Ohio Attorney General
Erik Clark oversees major litigation in the Office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, the State's chief law-enforcement officer. He also oversees the Office's antitrust, charitable-law, constitutional-offices, and consumer-protection sections.
As part of his role, Erik personally appears in court on behalf of the State of Ohio in select cases. He also advises the Attorney General on critical matters.
Previously, Erik was a partner for over ten years at Organ Law LLP, a Columbus litigation boutique. There, he frequently served as special counsel to the Ohio Attorney General, representing state-government clients. His cases included a challenge (by ECOT) to Ohio's school-funding system for virtual charter schools, a challenge to The Ohio State University's rules governing students' possession of firearms, a First-Amendment challenge to a law prohibiting targeted picketing at public officials' homes, and a challenge to congressional and Statehouse redistricting following the 2020 census.
Erik also represented large and small businesses and individuals in litigation, arbitration, and mediation. Among other matters, he represented Uber in cases brought by authorities seeking city-wide injunctions that would have blocked Uber from operating its then-nascent ride-sharing service in several major cities, including Columbus, St. Louis, and Tampa.
Erik has argued several appeals in federal and state appellate courts, including three cases in the Ohio Supreme Court. He has served as lead counsel in dozens of trial-court cases (including bench and jury trials), administrative hearings, and arbitrations.
Erik graduated summa cum laude from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Ohio State Law Journal.
After law school, he clerked for Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Erik then served as the Simon Karas Fellow in the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, where he worked with the Ohio State Solicitor on high-profile appeals before the Ohio Supreme Court, the Sixth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.
Before joining Organ Cole LLP in 2012, Erik was a business litigator at Jones Day, one of the largest law firms in the world.
Partner, Wilkinson Stekloff LLP
Rakesh specializes in delivering favorable results to clients at every stage of litigation. Since joining Wilkinson Stekloff, Rakesh has played a leading, stand-up role in high-profile trial victories for Bayer and the NCAA, obtained major summary judgment victories for Bayer and Georgia-Pacific, secured full dismissal of a groundbreaking enforcement action by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before any discovery was taken, and successfully defended a sitting federal judge in mandamus proceedings in the D.C. Circuit.
Equally adept in courtrooms and boardrooms, Rakesh is called upon to develop winning strategies in his clients’ most significant litigation matters. He is currently playing a lead strategic role in five high-stakes class actions or mass torts involving products liability, antitrust, and civil RICO claims, including serving as lead trial counsel for a sovereign Indian nation in a putative consumer class action in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Before joining the firm, Rakesh was a Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel in the Office of White House Counsel, where he provided legal advice and strategic counseling to the Obama Administration on its domestic policy agenda. He also helped to develop and implement the government’s litigation strategy in cases arising under the Affordable Care Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Rakesh began his career clerking for Justice Elena Kagan on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Rakesh is also active in the legal community. He sits on the Board of the Legal Aid Society for the District of Columbia, and is an editor of the Green Bag and a member of The American Lawyer’s Young Lawyer Editorial Board. He also serves on the Nominations Committee of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association-DC, and previously served as a Director of APABA-DC’s Education Fund.
Professor of Clinical Law, Brooklyn Law School
Jodi S. Balsam is Professor of Clinical Law at Brooklyn Law School and a nationally recognized expert on Sports Law. She directs the BLS Sports Law Clinic and Sports Law Externship Program. She teaches Sports Law at both BLS and NYU School of Law, and has also taught the subject at New York Law School, University of New Hampshire School of Law, Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany, Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, Hungary, and the MESGO Executive Masters Program in Global Sport Governance. Professor Balsam has served as an arbitrator for the National Collegiate Athletic Association on complex infractions cases, and now serves as a neutral for FAIR Sports, which hears cases involving college athletics.
Professor Balsam frequently writes and speaks on sports law topics, including as co-author of Weiler’s Sports and the Law, a leading casebook in the field. Her publications and presentations have addressed antitrust challenges to sports leagues and organizing bodies, sports trademarks, athletes’ rights of free expression and name/image/likeness exploitation, sports gambling and integrity, sports league governance, and the role of the sports agent. She frequently appears in the media on legal issues in sports, including NBC Sports/The Golf Channel, ESPN, Law360 Sports and Betting, The Athletic, Front Office Sports, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. She is on the editorial boards of Law360-Sports & Betting, the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, and the international sports law newsletter LawInSport.
Before joining academia, Professor Balsam was the National Football League's Counsel for Operations and Litigation, where she managed litigation in all areas of law, oversaw a variety of policy and operational matters, negotiated and drafted contracts for League special events including the Super Bowl, and administered the League's internal dispute resolution processes and compliance program. Prior to the NFL she was a litigator with the New York office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she represented sports and entertainment clients in antitrust matters and complex commercial litigation. She served as a law clerk for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge Charles Brieant of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A graduate of Yale College, Professor Balsam received her law degree from NYU School of Law.
Associate, Baker McKenzie
Kaitlyn Barry is an Associate at Baker McKenzie. Prior to joining the firm, she served as a trial attorney at the United States Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. She previously clerked for Judge Kurt Engelhardt at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Ron Clark at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Kaitlyn is a 2019 graduate of the University of Houston Law Center. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was an NCAA Division I varsity student-athlete on the Longhorns cross country and track teams.
Ohio Deputy Attorney General for Major Litigation, Office of the Ohio Attorney General
Erik Clark oversees major litigation in the Office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, the State's chief law-enforcement officer. He also oversees the Office's antitrust, charitable-law, constitutional-offices, and consumer-protection sections.
As part of his role, Erik personally appears in court on behalf of the State of Ohio in select cases. He also advises the Attorney General on critical matters.
Previously, Erik was a partner for over ten years at Organ Law LLP, a Columbus litigation boutique. There, he frequently served as special counsel to the Ohio Attorney General, representing state-government clients. His cases included a challenge (by ECOT) to Ohio's school-funding system for virtual charter schools, a challenge to The Ohio State University's rules governing students' possession of firearms, a First-Amendment challenge to a law prohibiting targeted picketing at public officials' homes, and a challenge to congressional and Statehouse redistricting following the 2020 census.
Erik also represented large and small businesses and individuals in litigation, arbitration, and mediation. Among other matters, he represented Uber in cases brought by authorities seeking city-wide injunctions that would have blocked Uber from operating its then-nascent ride-sharing service in several major cities, including Columbus, St. Louis, and Tampa.
Erik has argued several appeals in federal and state appellate courts, including three cases in the Ohio Supreme Court. He has served as lead counsel in dozens of trial-court cases (including bench and jury trials), administrative hearings, and arbitrations.
Erik graduated summa cum laude from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Ohio State Law Journal.
After law school, he clerked for Chief Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Erik then served as the Simon Karas Fellow in the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, where he worked with the Ohio State Solicitor on high-profile appeals before the Ohio Supreme Court, the Sixth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.
Before joining Organ Cole LLP in 2012, Erik was a business litigator at Jones Day, one of the largest law firms in the world.
Partner, Wilkinson Stekloff LLP
Rakesh specializes in delivering favorable results to clients at every stage of litigation. Since joining Wilkinson Stekloff, Rakesh has played a leading, stand-up role in high-profile trial victories for Bayer and the NCAA, obtained major summary judgment victories for Bayer and Georgia-Pacific, secured full dismissal of a groundbreaking enforcement action by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before any discovery was taken, and successfully defended a sitting federal judge in mandamus proceedings in the D.C. Circuit.
Equally adept in courtrooms and boardrooms, Rakesh is called upon to develop winning strategies in his clients’ most significant litigation matters. He is currently playing a lead strategic role in five high-stakes class actions or mass torts involving products liability, antitrust, and civil RICO claims, including serving as lead trial counsel for a sovereign Indian nation in a putative consumer class action in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Before joining the firm, Rakesh was a Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel in the Office of White House Counsel, where he provided legal advice and strategic counseling to the Obama Administration on its domestic policy agenda. He also helped to develop and implement the government’s litigation strategy in cases arising under the Affordable Care Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Rakesh began his career clerking for Justice Elena Kagan on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Rakesh is also active in the legal community. He sits on the Board of the Legal Aid Society for the District of Columbia, and is an editor of the Green Bag and a member of The American Lawyer’s Young Lawyer Editorial Board. He also serves on the Nominations Committee of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association-DC, and previously served as a Director of APABA-DC’s Education Fund.
Will Skillman Fellow in Education, Center for Education Policy, The Heritage Foundation
Jonathan Butcher is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (Bombardier Books, April 2022). He co-edited and wrote chapters in The Critical Classroom (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), discussing the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. In 2021, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster nominated Jonathan to serve on the board of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, a statewide charter school authorizer. He has researched and testified on education policy around the U.S.
Jonathan co-edited and wrote chapters in the book The Not-So-Great Society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K-12, and higher education.
In 2018 the Federal Commission on School Safety cited comments from his testimony in the commission’s final report. He has appeared on local and national TV outlets, including C-SPAN, Fox News, and HBO’s Vice News Tonight, and he has been a guest on many radio programs. His commentary has appeared nationally in places such as the Wall Street Journal, Education Week, National Review Online, Newsweek.com, and Forbes.com, along with newspapers around the country.
In 2017 he was a co-recipient of the State Policy Network’s Bob Williams Award for Most Influential Research for a proposal to protect free speech on campus, alongside Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Jim Manley of the Goldwater Institute.
Jonathan previously served as the education director at the Goldwater Institute, where he remains a senior fellow. He was a member of the Arizona Department of Education’s first Steering Committee for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the nation’s first education savings account program. He is also a Senior Fellow with The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a nonpartisan research organization, and a contributing scholar for the Georgia Center for Opportunity.
Prior to joining Goldwater, Jonathan was the director of accountability for the South Carolina Public Charter School District. Jonathan previously studied education policy at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and worked with the School Choice Demonstration Project, the research team that evaluated voucher programs in Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee, Wisc.
Jonathan holds a B.A. in English from Furman University and an M.A. in economics from the University of Arkansas.
Co-Founder and President, Defense of Freedom Institute
Bob is a co-founder and President of DFI. He previously served as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Education from 2017 through 2020 and Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education from 2005 until 2009.
During his most recent tenure at the Department, Bob served on the Secretary’s Leadership Team as a strategic and legal adviser on higher education, civil rights, and congressional oversight matters. As the Department’s Regulatory Reform Officer, he also supervised the implementation of the Secretary’s regulatory agenda and was an architect of the Secretary’s reforms concerning Title IX and the Higher Education Act. As Deputy General Counsel, Bob advised on a wide variety of regulatory, legislative, and oversight matters.
Prior to joining the Department in 2017, Bob was vice president for regulatory compliance matters for several postsecondary institutions and practiced education and employment law in Washington, D.C. Before coming to the Department in 2005, he practiced law in New Orleans, litigating commercial, employment, and bankruptcy cases in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.
Bob earned his A.B. in History from Georgetown University, studied British government and international politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and received his law degree from Tulane University Law School. His articles have been published by National Review, Real Clear Education, Washington Examiner, and other media outlets. Fox News has featured his work.
Bob is a member of the District of Columbia and Louisiana Bars and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the Education Gadfly Weekly, host of the Education Gadfly Show podcast, and a contributor at Forbes.com. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, editor of Education for Upward Mobility, and co-editor of How to Educate an American and Follow the Science to School. An expert on charter schools, school accountability, evidence-based practices, and trends in test scores and other student outcomes, Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the Policy Innovators in Education Network, and serves on the board of the Association of American Educators Foundation. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Director of Research, National Association of Scholars
David Randall is director of research at the National Association of Scholars (NAS). He has co-authored The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science: Causes, Consequences, and the Road to Reform (2018), as well as articles on the irreproducibility crisis for The Wall Street Journal and The Hill. He has also written reports for the NAS on civics education, social justice education, college common readings, and the College Board’s Advanced Placement European History examination. His academic works include The Concept of Conversation: From Cicero’s Sermo to the Grand Siècle’s Conversation (2018) and The Conversational Enlightenment: The Reconception of Rhetoric in Eighteenth-Century Thought (2019).
David earned a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University, an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University, a master’s degree in library science from the Palmer School at Long Island University, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. Prior to working at NAS he was the sole librarian at the John McEnroe Library at New York Studio School, where he secured a number of grants for the school’s Lecture Series Archive Digitization Project.
Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Kent Talbert is a Washington, DC-based attorney with over 25 years’ experience in providing advice on education law and policy in Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and the private sector. His practice includes legal and policy advice to colleges and universities, for-profit schools, accrediting agencies, the pre-K-12 sector, charter school organizations, trade associations, and education-focused companies, as well as service as an expert witness. He currently serves as Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Prior to establishing his firm, Mr. Talbert practiced at Talbert & Eitel, PLLC from 2010-2012. From 2006-2009 he served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education, advising the Secretary of Education on a broad range of legal and policy matters, including the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the drafting and implementation of regulations under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and major education law cases pending before the Supreme Court of the United States and other appellate and trial courts. During his tenure as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department, overseeing all documents for publication in the Federal Register.
He has provided legal and strategic advice on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans With Disabilities Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act ("Clery Act"), Federal Student Aid program reviews, negotiated rulemaking, and accreditation.
Prior to his service as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Department's Deputy General Counsel for Departmental and Legislative Service from 2001-2006. Earlier in his career, Mr. Talbert served for over 12 years on House and Senate staff, both as Education Policy Counsel for the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a professional staff member of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources (now Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Talbert is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia and South Carolina, the Alliance of Public Charter School Attorneys, and the National Association of College and University Attorneys where he serves on the Committee on Legal Education. He is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and all federal courts in South Carolina and Washington, DC.
Partner at K&L Gates, Former OFCCP Director, and President-Elect of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia
Craig E. Leen is a partner in the Washington, DC office of K&L Gates, where he is a member of the Labor, Employment, and Workplace Safety practice group. Mr. Leen is also the President-Elect of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
Mr. Leen was formerly the Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor, where he reported directly to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Labor.
Mr. Leen serves as a Professorial Lecturer in Law and Professor of Government Lawyering at The George Washington University Law School, as Vice Chair of the District of Columbia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, as Co-Chair of the DC Family Support Council, and as Chair of the Civil and Human Rights Committee of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
Prior to his federal service at OFCCP, Mr. Leen was the City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, and before that was Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office. Earlier in his career, Mr. Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.
In recognition of his public service, Mr. Leen received the Secretary's Exceptional Achievement Award - Professional while at the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Paul S. Buchman Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Area of Legal Public Service while in local government.
Mr. Leen is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, and New York, and is also board certified by The Florida Bar in city, county, and local government law.
Mr. Leen received his Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School, graduating as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and having served as a teaching fellow in both Contracts and Torts. Mr. Leen received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he majored in both Government and Economics.
Deputy Legal Director, Governing for Impact
John is Deputy Legal Director at Governing for Impact and contributes to the organization’s legal work, including its development of challenges to harmful regulatory policies, preparation of legal primers, and regulatory comment practice. Previously, John served as an attorney with the Federal Programs Branch of the Department of Justice, where he defended major federal policies against legal challenge and advised federal agencies concerning litigation risk, and also worked at Democracy Forward, where he served as lead counsel in numerous lawsuits challenging unlawful federal action. John clerked for Judge Stanley Marcus on the Eleventh Circuit. A graduate of the University of Texas and Yale Law School, John grew up in Houston, Texas, and is barred in Texas and Washington, D.C.
Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director, Cicero Institute
Jonathan Wolfson is the Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director at the Cicero Institute. Before joining Cicero, he led the Policy Office at the U.S. Department of Labor where he managed DOL's deregulatory efforts and oversaw DOL's internal policy development think tank. He previously was a litigator and regulatory attorney at an international law firm representing clients before state and federal courts across the country. Following law school he served as a law clerk to The Honorable Edith Brown Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before law school, Jonathan was a policy analyst at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Jonathan received an A.B. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was an Olin Law and Economic Fellow and won the John M. Olin Prize for best original law and economics research.
Reducing Regulatory Barriers: The Future of Market Competition
On April 9th, President Trump signed E.O. 14267, Reducing Anti-Competitive Regulatory Barriers, which “commences the...
Reducing Regulatory Barriers: The Future of Market Competition
Alden F. Abbott, Charlie Beller, Kathleen W. Bradish, Bilal Sayyed
On April 9th, President Trump signed E.O. 14267, Reducing Anti-Competitive Regulatory Barriers, which “commences the process...
Topics
Clean Water Act Clarity: Will the Supreme Court Grant Cert in Port of Tacoma v. Puget Soundkeeper Alliance?
On May 27, 2025, the United States filed an amicus brief in a case testing...
Antitrust in the College Sports Arena
Jodi S. Balsam, Kaitlyn Barry, Erik J. Clark, Rakesh Kilaru
In 2020, several collegiate athletes filed suit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) arguing...
Antitrust in the College Sports Arena
Jodi S. Balsam, Kaitlyn Barry, Erik J. Clark, Rakesh Kilaru
In 2020, several collegiate athletes filed suit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) arguing...
Topics
The First Amendment is Again in Colorado’s Crosshairs
No one doubts that the State of Colorado has an interest in protecting its citizens’...
Can the President Shut Down the Department of Education?
Jonathan Butcher, Robert S. Eitel, Michael J. Petrilli, David Randall, Kent D. Talbert
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
On March 20, President Trump signed E.O. 14242, Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,...
Topics
In Ames v. Ohio Youth Services, the Supreme Court Follows the Text and Rejects Discrimination
On June 5, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Ames v. Ohio Department...
Topics
Supreme Court’s Unanimous Ruling in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County Might Be a Game Changer for Infrastructure
The Supreme Court just gave America’s infrastructure builders their biggest procedural victory in a generation,...
Checks and Balances: Deregulation Based on Supreme Court Rulings
Craig E. Leen, John Lewis, Jonathan Wolfson
Among the points emphasized by the second Trump administration has been a major push for...