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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.
James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law & Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Jorge L. Contreras is a Distinguished University Professor, the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law. He teaches and researches in the areas of intellectual property, property law, technical standardization, antitrust and science policy. In 2020 he received the University of Utah's Distinguished Research Award and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and House Subcommittees on Intellectual Property, and was awarded the Rossman Memorial Award by the Patent & Trademark Office Society in 2022.
Professor Contreras has written or edited fourteen books and published more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters. His book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (NY: Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), has been praised by the NY Times, Wall St. Journal, Nature and numerous other outlets, and was named "Best Patent Law Book of the Year" by the international IPKat blog. His scholarly articles have appeared in leading scientific, legal and policy journals including Science, Nature, NYU Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Iowa Law Review and Antitrust Law Journal. He has been quoted by media outlets around the world including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Korea Times and has been featured on C-SPAN, NPR, PRI and BBC shows and a range of podcasts and online news programs.
Professor Contreras currently serves Co-Chair of the Interdisciplinary Division of the ABA's Section of Science & Technology Law and a member of the Advisory Board of the American Antitrust Institute. He has previously served as Co-Chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Intellectual Property Management in Standard-Setting Processes, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Council of Councils, the Advisory Council of NIH's National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS), the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, and the Intellectual Property Rights Policy Committee of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). In 2021 he served as Chair of the Art Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and currently serves as Chair of the AALS Remedies Section.
Professor Contreras has previously taught at American University Washington College of Law and Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to entering academia he was a partner at the international law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where he practiced transactional and intellectual property law in Boston, London and Washington DC. He is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Rice University (BA, BSEE) and clerked for Chief Justice Thomas R. Philips of the Texas Supreme Court.
Partner, Holland & Knight
David C. Kully is an antitrust attorney in Holland & Knight’s Washington, D.C., office and a member of the firm’s Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice. Mr. Kully has extensive antitrust experience and joined the firm after serving as Chief (2013-16) and Assistant Chief (2008-13) of the Litigation III Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division, where he supervised a team of 25 attorneys. At the DOJ, he worked closely with Antitrust Division economists evaluating antitrust compliance issues, litigating antitrust enforcement actions and shaping competition policy in a wide variety of industries, including payments, music, live entertainment, movies, publishing, newspapers, television, radio, sports and real estate.
During his 18 years with the Antitrust Division, Mr. Kully served in central roles on many of the Antitrust Division’s most significant matters, achieving a consistent track record of success. He and his team investigated and successfully litigated three of the most prominent government antitrust enforcement actions in the past decade: cases challenging an e-books price fixing conspiracy, credit card “anti-steering” rules and a merger of appliance manufacturers. For his work on both the credit card matter and the e-books matter, Mr. Kully and his teams were honored with the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service, the DOJ’s second-highest performance award. In addition to those high-profile cases, he also supervised and participated in major matters that did not involve litigation, including investigations into mergers or other anticompetitive conduct in the music, live entertainment, newspaper, broadcast television, radio, book publishing and movie theater industries.
Before joining the DOJ, Mr. Kully was in private practice at the Washington, D.C., office of a large international law firm and, from there, was recruited to participate as counsel in a special investigation conducted by the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee into campaign finance irregularities that arose during the 1996 federal election cycle.
Of-Counsel, Holland & Knight
John Moran is a litigation attorney in Holland & Knight's Washington, D.C. office. Mr. Moran focuses his practice on intellectual property matters.
Mr. Moran has experience litigating many patent, trademark and trade secret cases in federal district court and argues appeals at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He also has experience representing clients in Section 337 investigations before the International Trade Commission. His significant knowledge has led him to be called upon to testify as an expert witness on patent issues.
Mr. Moran has prosecuted or directly supervised the prosecution of hundreds of patent applications in many different technologies, including telecommunications systems and equipment, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), imaging technology, nuclear reactor instrumentation, semiconductor devices and manufacturing processes and medical devices.
Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Moran worked as an electrical engineer for six years in the fields of semiconductor design, microprocessor design and software, microprocessor-controlled products, process control and telecommunications. His engineering career included four years with RCA at its solid state division and at its David Sarnoff Research Center.
Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division
M. Brinkley Tappan is Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General. Brinkley joined the Antitrust Division in September 2014 as International Counsel in the International Section, where she managed the Division's relationships with the Korea Fair Trade Commission and the Competition Commission of India, intellectual property policy issues around the world, and the Division's requests to foreign governments for mutual legal assistance and extradition in international cartel cases. During her time as International Counsel, Brinkley was also detailed to various civil matters, including the Division's litigation to block the merger of Anthem/Cigna. Prior to joining the Division, Brinkley practiced for nine years in the antitrust group of an international law firm based in Washington, D.C. Brinkley is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in history.
Partner, Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider LLP
Koren Wong-Ervin is a recognized thought leader on competition issues who has testified before Congress on domestic and international issues in antitrust policy. She has more than eighteen years of experience in government, private practice, and as in-house counsel, including representing defendants and plaintiffs in high-stakes litigations and representing companies in domestic and foreign investigations. While at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Koren served as an Attorney Advisor to Commissioner Joshua Wright and Counsel for Intellectual Property & International Antitrust.
The combination of Koren's experience representing defendants—along with her experience at the FTC and as a former plaintiffs class action attorney—gives her insights into the thinking on both sides of cases, including complex multi-district litigations, allowing her to develop both effective offensive and defensive strategies. On top of this, her in-house experience as the Director of Antitrust Litigation & Policy at a major technology company gives her a first-hand understanding of how companies work and unique insight into the needs of clients. Koren also has a deep understanding of economics, as evidenced by the fact that she has trained over 500 foreign judges and enforcers on a variety of economic topics.
Koren’s scholarship has been cited by courts and the Department of Justice. She has authored over sixty articles, including on vertical mergers and restraints, acquisitions of potential competitors, consummated mergers, multisided platforms, the intersection of antitrust and intellectual property, incremental innovations or “product hopping,” optimal penalties, extraterritoriality, methodologies for calculating patent infringement damages, and international due process and convergence. She has spoken at over 200 domestic and international events.
Executive Director, General Counsel, Christian Legal Fellowship
Derek B.M. Ross, LL.B. (Western), LL.M. (Toronto), is the Executive Director & General Counsel for Christian Legal Fellowship, where he oversees all aspects of the organization's operations, education and training programs, publications, and advocacy. He maintains a litigation practice with a focus on human rights and religious freedom, and has acted as lead or co-counsel for public interest interveners in 13 cases involving the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including 5 before the Supreme Court of Canada. He has appeared before every level of court in Ontario, as well as the Courts of Appeal in British Columbia and Nova Scotia. He has also appeared before numerous legislative and Parliamentary committees to present submissions on constitutional and legal issues.
Mr. Ross previously served as Director of Legal Affairs for the Canadian Council of Christian Charities, Canada's largest association of religious organizations, where he served on the Canada Revenue Agency's Technical Issues Working Group and as the general editor of the Charities Handbook, 19th Edition (2014), a comprehensive legal guide for Canadian charities. Prior to that, he practiced civil litigation with a focus on public, education, and municipal law.
Mr. Ross has served as an Executive Member of the Charity and Not-for-Profit Law sections and the Constitutional, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Law sections of both the Canadian Bar Association and the Ontario Bar Association. He regularly presents at legal conferences and law faculties on constitutional and charity law. He is editor-in-chief of the Christian Legal Journal, a quarterly periodical examining the relationship between law and religion. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, including Policy Options, Lawyer's Weekly, Canadian Lawyer, Montreal Gazette, Public Discourse, and the Chronicle-Herald. His work has been cited in the Senate of Canada and several Parliamentary reports. He is the general editor of a forthcoming special edition of the Supreme Court Law Review (2018).
Mr. Ross spent his formative years growing up in Port Hedland, Australia, surrounded by the rugged beauty of the Pilbara Outback, and considers himself a Quasi-Aussie (he can still speak fluent Australian, if you ask him). As much as he loves his second Aussie home, he couldn’t be prouder to be a Canadian (and a Canadiens fan).
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Miguel A. Estrada is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Mr. Estrada has represented clients before federal and state courts throughout the country in a broad range of matters. He has argued 24 cases before the United States Supreme Court, and briefed many others. He has also argued dozens of appeals in the lower federal courts.
Best Lawyers® recognized Mr. Estrada as a 2020 Lawyer of the Year in Intellectual Property Litigation and as a Lawyer of the Year in Appellate Practice. He has been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a 2020 U.S. Appellate Litigation “Star”. In 2014, The American Lawyer named Mr. Estrada a “Litigator of the Year,” praising his “brains and tenacity” and noting he is the lawyer to call for “a tough, potentially unwinnable case.” From 2014-2021, Chambers & Partners has named him as one of a handful of attorneys that it ranked in the top tier among the nation’s leading appellate lawyers. Chambers & Partners noted that “clients are impressed by his intellect and ability, with one saying, ‘His papers are just blindingly clear in what they say and devastating in how they marshal the arguments.’” The Atlantic described his oral argument in a 2014 high-profile separation-of-powers case as “one of the most dazzling arguments the marble chamber has heard in many years.”
Mr. Estrada was selected by his peers for inclusion in the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® in the area of Appellate Law, in addition to previous recognition by the publication in the specialties of Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation and Criminal Defense: White Collar, Intellectual Property Litigation, and Regulatory Enforcement Litigation in the areas of SEC, Telecom, and Energy. In 2017, he was elected as a member of the American Law Institute. In 2021, Mr. Estrada was named among the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. In 2004, Legal Times named him one of the top 12 appellate litigators in the D.C. area, noting that “people who follow appellate practice in Washington have known for several years that Estrada . . . is one of the best around.” Also in 2004, Washingtonian Magazine named him one of the top constitutional law lawyers “who could become one of the legends of the Supreme Court bar.”
Mr. Estrada joined Gibson Dunn in 1997, after serving for five years as Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States. He previously served as Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York. In those capacities, Mr. Estrada represented the government in numerous jury trials and in many appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Estrada practiced corporate law in New York with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Mr. Estrada is a Trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He was formerly a member of the Board of Visitors of Harvard Law School.
Mr. Estrada served as a law clerk to the Honorable Anthony M. Kennedy in the U.S. Supreme Court from 1988 to 1989 and to the Honorable Amalya L. Kearse in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1986 to 1987. He received a J.D. degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. Mr. Estrada graduated with an A.B. degree magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1983 from Columbia College, New York. He is fluent in Spanish and proficient in French.
Representative Supreme Court matters include:
In 2011, the Supreme Court appointed Mr. Estrada to brief and argue two criminal cases –Dorsey v. United States and Hill v. United States – in which the Solicitor General declined to defend the judgments of the court of appeals. Mr. Estrada was appointed to argue the position that the Solicitor General had declined to defend.
Mr. Estrada was also part of the team that successfully presented then Governor Bush’s position to the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000). Other cases that Mr. Estrada handled in the Supreme Court include Granholm v. Heald (2005) (dormant Commerce Clause and Twenty-First Amendment), Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens (2000) (False Claims Act, Article III standing and Eleventh Amendment immunity), Old Chief v. United States (1997) (rules of evidence), United States v. Mezzanatto (1995) (evidence and plea bargaining), United States v. Robertson (1995) (constitutional limits on Congress’s Commerce Clause powers), Citizens Bank of Maryland v. Strumpf (1995) (bankruptcy law), and NOW, Inc. v. Scheidler (1994) (RICO).
Recent Court of Appeals matters include:
In addition, Mr. Estrada is lead appellate counsel to Vivendi S.A. in two securities-fraud appeals from jury verdicts that are currently pending in the Second Circuit, and to the National Association of Broadcasters in a challenge to certain procedures promulgated by the FCC in connection with the upcoming Spectrum Auction. Mr. Estrada also recently presented argument before the D.C. Circuit on behalf of the tobacco industry in a first amendment challenge to certain compelled disclosures that were imposed as part of the government’s long-running civil RICO case against the industry.
Other matters:
Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Thomas G. Hungar is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Gibson Dunn. His practice focuses on appellate litigation, and he assists clients with congressional investigations and complex trial court litigation matters as well. He has presented oral argument before the Supreme Court of the United States in 28 cases, including some of the Court’s most important patent, antitrust, securities, and environmental law decisions, and he has also appeared before numerous lower federal and state courts.
Thomas served as General Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives from July 2016 until January 2019. As General Counsel, he provided legal advice and litigation representation on a non-partisan basis to the House and its leadership, members, officers, and staff, and he worked closely with numerous House committees in connection with their oversight and investigative activities. Previously, he served as a Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. In that position, he supervised business-related appellate litigation for the federal government, with particular emphasis on patent, antitrust, securities, and environmental appellate cases, and he also oversaw appellate litigation in banking, bankruptcy, tax, government contracts, communications, copyright, labor, trademark, and international trade matters. In private practice, Thomas’s appellate experience has encompassed those areas as well as class actions, constitutional law, employment law, product liability, administrative procedure, insurance coverage and bad faith, and general commercial litigation. He has handled scores of business-related appeals in the Supreme Court and lower appellate courts, and has briefed and argued many high-profile matters.
Thomas is a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and is a frequent lecturer in his areas of expertise. While at the Department of Justice, he served as Appellate Counsel to the Intellectual Property Task Force Executive Staff, and he was awarded the John Marshall Award for Outstanding Legal Achievement, the Department’s highest award presented to attorneys for contributions and excellence in legal performance, in recognition of his handling of patent-law matters before the Supreme Court.
Most recently, Thomas has garnered national recognition for his Appellate Practice in The Legal 500 – United States, Best Lawyers in America, and in Chambers USA, which has repeatedly highlighted Thomas for his “expertise in appellate litigation” and experience with employment and antitrust disputes, as well as Congressional Investigations. Thomas was also recently named a “Litigation Star” by Benchmark Litigation.
Thomas served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States from 1992-1994. He also served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court and to Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1987, where he was a Senior Editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review. He received his Bachelor of Science degree magna cum laude in mathematics/computer science and economics from Willamette University in 1984.
Thomas is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.
Senior Fellow and Academic Director, Penn Carey Law School
Gus Hurwitz is a Senior Fellow and the Academic Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School where he is working to develop academic and scholarly programs at the intersecution of law, technology, and policy.
He is also Director of Law & Economics Programs at the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE), a think tank based in Portland, Oregon, where he directs its law and economics-focused research program and helps to translate academic research into applied policy issues.
Hurwitz's research focuses on the regulation of technology, including administrative and regulatory law, antitrust law, torts and products liability, and media law - alongside cognate fields. Inrecent years he has worked on an AI standardization initiative with Seoul National University, a UNICEF-organized study of broadband deployment to public schools in Rwanda, and a book on conglomerate and ecosystems theories of antitrust.
He has published over 30 articles and book chapters, two books (one on cybersecurity law & policy, one on media regulation in the digital era) and have two more in process, over 100 shorter writings (op-eds, shorter analyses, blog posts, &c), hosted over 100 podcast episodes, and regularly appear or am quoted in popular media (including the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Associated Press). His work has been cited by legislators, federal courts of appeals, and federal regulatory agencies.
He was previously a full professor and founding director of the Governance & Technology Center at the University of Nebraska, prior to which he was the inaugural research fellow at the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition (CTIC). From 2007 to 2010, he was a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division in the Telecommunications and Media Enforcement Section.
He also is, or has been, affiliated with the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law, the National Security Institute at George Mason University, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Before attending law school, Hurwitz worked at Los Alamos National Lab and interned at the Naval Research Lab. During this time his work was recognized by the Federal Laboratory Consortium, Los Alamos National Lab, IEEE & ACM, Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, R&D Magazine, and even the Guinness Book of World Records.
A current list of Hurwitz’s publications is available on his website: GusHurwitz.net.
President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics
Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a distinguished fellow at Northwestern Law School’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation, & Economic Growth. In April 2017 he was appointed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, and he recently served for two years on the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee.
Mr. Manne earned his JD and AB degrees from the University of Chicago and is an expert in the economic analysis of law, specializing in competition, telecommunications, consumer protection, intellectual property, and technology policy.
Prior to founding ICLE, Manne was a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. From 2006-2009, he took a leave from teaching to develop Microsoft’s law and economics academic outreach program. Manne has also served as a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. He practiced antitrust law and appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins, clerked for Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as a research assistant for Judge Richard Posner. He was also once (very briefly) employed by the FTC.
Mr. Manne’s publications have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Supreme Court Economic Review, and the Arizona Law Review, among others. With former FTC Commissioner, Joshua Wright, Manne is the editor of a volume from Cambridge University Press entitled, Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law Under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation. Manne has also testified on several occasions before Congress and at the FCC and FTC, and he regularly files written comments and amicus briefs on key antitrust, IP, and telecommunications issues. His analysis is frequently published in popular print and broadcasting outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Affairs, NPR, and Bloomberg, among others.
Manne is a member of the American Law and Economics Association, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics. He blogs at Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com) (of which he is also the co-founder), is a contributor at WIRED, and tweets at @geoffmanne. His scholarly publications are available at http://ssrn.com/author=175541.
Legal Fellow, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute
Brent Skorup is a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Before joining Cato, he was a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at the George Mason University. His research areas include free speech, technology law, Fourth Amendment protections, regulation, and property law. Skorup has published pieces in economics and law journals and in popular media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Reuters, and Wired. He’s appeared as a TV and radio interview guest for news outlets like C‑SPAN, NPR, CBS News, ABC News, and CNBC Asia.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a dissenting opinion at the Illinois Supreme Court, and the ALI's Restatement of the Law of Property have cited his legal research and he has testified as a technology and legal expert in legislative hearings in several states. Skorup has been appointed to several federal and state advisory bodies and he is currently a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Advisory Committee.
Skorup has a BA in economics from Wheaton College and a law degree from the George Mason University School of Law, where he was articles editor for the Civil Rights Law Journal. He was a legal clerk at the FCC’s wireless bureau and Office of General Counsel and at the Energy and Commerce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Randy Barnett is the Patrick Hotung Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, tried murder cases to juries as a prosecutor in Chicago, and appeared as a prosecutor in the feature film Inalienable. He is the author of numerous books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution, The Structure of Liberty, Our Republican Constitution, and The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He has published two memoirs, A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist, and Felony Review: Tales of True Crime and Corruption in Chicago. He is currently working on a new book, Freedom and Flourishing: Libertarianism for the Real World.
Presiding Judge, Georgia Court of Appeals
Presiding Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard was appointed as the 73rd judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia on November 1, 2010 by Governor Sonny Perdue. Prior to his appointment, Judge Dillard was in private practice with James, Bates, Pope & Spivey in Macon, serving as chairman of the firm’s appellate practice group. Judge Dillard was elected and then reelected by his fellow Georgians in 2012, 2018, and 2024. On July 1, 2017, Judge Dillard was sworn in as the 30th Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of Georgia for a two-year term that ended on June 30, 2019. He currently serves as the presiding judge of the Court’s Fourth Division, and will begin serving as the presiding judge of the Court’s Third Division in 2026.
Judge Dillard was born in Nashville, Tennessee on November 13, 1969. He attended and graduated from Hillwood High School in Nashville, Tennessee; Samford University (B.A. 1992); Mississippi College School of Law (J.D., cum laude, 1996); and Duke University School of Law (LL.M., Judicial Studies, 2025). In college, Judge Dillard was a member of The Sigma Chi Fraternity and Omicron Delta Kappa. He was also given the Evelyn Meadows Historical Essay Award, as well as the William McMillian Rogers Colonial Dames Overall Essay Award, for “The Tempting of America to be America: Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Papers.” During law school, Judge Dillard was a member of the Moot Court Board and received the Judge Robert G. Gillespie Outstanding Achievement in Appellate Advocacy Award, as well as the American Jurisprudence Award in Appellate Advocacy. He also served as president of the Mississippi College Chapter of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
After graduating from law school, Judge Dillard joined the Macon law firm of Stone and Baxter, where he practiced from 1996 until 2001. In September 2001, he left private practice for a two-year period to serve as a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for Judge Daniel A. Manion (who was appointed by President Ronald W. Reagan in 1986 and served until 2022). In September 2003, Judge Dillard joined James Bates as of counsel, specialized in appellate practice and complex litigation, and served as chairperson of the firm’s appellate practice group. While in practice, he received an AV® Preeminent™ Peer-Review Rating from Martindale-Hubbell and was named by Super Lawyers as one of Georgia’s “rising stars.”
Additionally, Judge Dillard was appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue to the Judicial Nominating Commission and the Public Defender Selection Panel for the Macon Judicial Circuit. He has published scholarly essays in the Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties, the Encyclopedia of Great American Judges, the Encyclopedia of Great American Lawyers, Judicature, the Green Bag Almanac & Reader, the Journal of Appellate Practice & Process, as well as two articles in the Mercer Law Review regarding the inner workings and culture of the Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia. He was also a participating lawyer with the Criminal Justice Act Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, handling pro bono publico appeals for indigent individuals. Judge Dillard is a member of the State Bar of Georgia’s Appellate Practice and Judicial Sections, the Macon Bar Association, the Atlanta Bar Association, the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, the Saint Thomas More Society, the Judge Clarence Cooper American Inn of Court, the Logan E. Bleckley American Inn of Court, the William Augustus Bootle American Inn of Court, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the Palaver Club of Macon, and the Samford Bulldog Club. He also has served as a mentor for The Appellate Project, which is “focused on empowering law students of color to pursue appellate work.”
Since joining the Court of Appeals, Judge Dillard has spoken to numerous organizations, participated in countless state and national seminars, held a wide variety of leadership positions, and received many awards. In 2025, one of Judge Dillard’s opinions—his concurrence in Board of Commissioners of Brantley County v. Brantley County Development Partners LLC et al.—was selected by The Green Bag Almanac and Reader as one of its works of “exemplary writing.” Judge Dillard was also named as the Milvain Chair in Advocacy by the University of Calgary Law Faculty that year, and he is the first American jurist and 43rd person to ever receive this honor. In 2024, Judge Dillard was appointed by Chief Justice Michael P. Boggs as co-chair of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Study Committee on Legal Regulatory Reform, joined The Legal Accountability Project’s Advisory Board, and also gave the “Last Senior Lecture” to the Samford University Class of 2024. In 2023, Judge Dillard began serving his second term on Samford University’s Board of Overseers, and started the L.L.M. program for Judicial Studies at the Duke University School of Law. In 2022, he began serving on the Communications Committee of the Council of Chief Judges of the State Courts of Appeal. In 2021, Judge Dillard was given the “Significant Sig” award by The Sigma Chi Fraternity (one of its highest honors), which “recognizes those alumni members whose exemplary achievements in their fields of endeavor have brought great honor and prestige to the name of Sigma Chi.” He also began serving that year on the Dean Search Committee for Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law, and completed his work on that committee in April 2022. In 2020, Judge Dillard began serving his second two-year term as the president of the Samford University Alumni Association, a three-year term on Samford University’s Board of Overseers, as an advisor to the Pi Chapter of The Sigma Chi Fraternity at Samford University, and as a member of the Samford University Presidential Search Committee and the Samford University Task Force on Racial Justice. He was also given the Distinguished Judicial Service Award that year by the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Georgia for the second time in his career. In 2019, Judge Dillard began teaching Appellate Practice and Procedure at Mercer University Law School and joined the National Advisory Board for The Constitutional Sources Project (“ConSource”), an organization dedicated to increasing access to and understanding of the United States Constitution and its history and creation. He was also named that year as the “Tweeter Laureate” of Georgia by the Georgia House of Representatives, as one of Atlanta’s 500 most powerful leaders by Atlanta Magazine, and as “Best Social Mediator” by the Fulton County Daily Report. In 2018, Judge Dillard began serving his first two-year term as president of the Samford University Alumni Association, as well as a member of the Samford University Athletic Director’s Cabinet. He also began his service that year as a member of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Justice for Children Committee. In 2017, Judge Dillard was named Samford University’s “Alumnus of the Year,” which is the highest honor the university bestows on its graduates. In 2016, Judge Dillard began serving a two-year term as president of Samford University’s Atlanta Alumni chapter. He was also appointed that year as the co-chairperson of the Georgia Judicial Council’s Strategic Plan Standing Committee, and as a member of the Council’s Standing Committee on Technology. Finally, he was also named Samford University’s 2016 “Featured Alumnus” for the Howard College of Arts and Sciences. In 2015, Judge Dillard was appointed by Governor Nathan Deal to the Georgia Appellate Jurisdiction Review Commission. He was also appointed that year to serve on the Georgia Judicial Council, and as the chairperson of the Court Reporting Matters Committee. In 2014, Judge Dillard was named the “State Judge of the Year” by his alma mater, the Mississippi College School of Law, for his outstanding judicial service; and he also received the “Fastcase 50” award, which honors leaders in the world of law, scholarship, and legal technology. In 2013, Judge Dillard was awarded the Distinguished Judicial Service Award by the Young Lawyers Division of the State Bar of Georgia, recognizing his outstanding service on the bench and commitment to improving the practice of law. In 2012, Judge Dillard was appointed to the Code of Judicial Conduct Review Committee by Chief Judge John J. Ellington, and he also began serving as the special consultant to the Georgia High School Mock Trial Committee.
Among his many accomplishments in leadership at the Court of Appeals, Judge Dillard restructured the Court’s Central Staff Attorney Office, advocated for and implemented livestreaming and archiving of the Court’s oral arguments, helped design and shepherd a complete overhaul of the Court’s operational structure, had the primary responsibility for overseeing the Court’s move to the Nathan Deal Judicial Center (during his time as chief judge), drafted numerous Court rules (including the rule abolishing “physical precedent”) and IOM revisions, and lead the implementation of the Court’s transition to its first typography change in twenty years (i.e., the “Equity” font). Finally, he created, designed, and continues to oversee the Judge Herbert E. Phipps Fellowship program in partnership with Morehouse College.
Judge Dillard is married to the former Krista McDaniel, and they have three children. He is a parishioner of Saint Joseph Catholic Church and the former president of the School Board for Saint Joseph’s Catholic School.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
William H. Pryor Jr. serves as Chief Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
In 2013–18, he served on the United States Sentencing Commission and, in 2017–18, served as Acting Chair.
He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and previously taught as an adjunct professor at the Cumberland School of Law of Samford University.
He served as the 45th Attorney General of Alabama from 1997 to 2004. When he took office, he was the youngest attorney general in the nation. In his reelection, he received the highest percentage of votes of any statewide candidate.
He graduated magna cum laude from Tulane Law School where he finished first in the common-law curriculum and was editor in chief of the Tulane Law Review. He then served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
He is a member of The American Law Institute and an Adviser for the RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW THIRD, CONFLICT OF LAWS. He is a coauthor with Bryan Garner, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and several other judges of a treatise, THE LAW OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT. He has published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Yale Law & Policy Review, George Mason Law Review, Florida Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, and Tulane Law Review. He has published op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review, and USA Today. He has debated at National Lawyers’ Conventions of the Federalist Society (including on National Public Radio) and at the Oxford Union in the United Kingdom. And he is listed among several “widely admired judicial writers” in Bryan Garner’s The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style.
He is a member of the Tulane Law School Hall of Fame and has received the Defender of the Constitution Award from the Heritage Foundation, the Jurist of the Year Award from the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and the St. Thomas More Award from the St. Thomas More Society of Atlanta. Judge Pryor is also a proud member of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Assistant Professor, Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion, University of Louisville
David Buckley is Associate Professor of Political Science, and Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science & Religion at the University of Louisville. David recently concluded a term as a Senior Advisor in the State Department’s Secretary’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (S/RGA), where he served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow from August 2016-July 2017. David’s research focuses on religion and international affairs, and in particular the influence of religious actors on democratic politics. David’s book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines (Columbia University Press, 2017) was awarded the 2018 Religion and International Relations Book Award by the International Studies Association. His research and writing has appeared in leading journals of political science and media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. David holds a PhD in Government from Georgetown University, an M.A. in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied as a George C. Mitchell Scholar, and a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia.
Attorney-Adviser, Office of Legal Counsel, The Justice Department
Nathan A. Forrester currently works at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and previously served as Solicitor General of Alabama under then-Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. He clerked for Associate Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy from 1993-1994 and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1992-1993. He is a 1992 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School.
Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Justin R. Walker is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump on May 4, 2020, and confirmed by the United States Senate on June 18, 2020. He is a former United States District Judge of the Western District of Kentucky.
