Taylor Owings is a partner in the Antitrust and Competition Practice Group of Baker Botts L.L.P. She represents clients in civil merger and non-merger matters both in front of government agencies and in private litigation. She also counsels clients on the application of antitrust law to their business activities, with special experience in issues related to the digital economy.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Owings served as Senior Counsel and Chief of Staff in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2018 to 2021. In that role, Ms. Owings was a key advisor to the Assistant Attorney General on the application of antitrust law to technology industries, including in the Department of Justice’s review of the business practices of market-leading online platforms and in the application of antitrust law to the exercise of intellectual property rights and standard setting organizations. As Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division, Ms. Owings was responsible for ensuring the high quality of all public advocacy issued by the Division, including court filings, policy statements, and speeches.
Ms. Owings has experience crafting both trial and appellate strategy in headline-making antitrust litigations. She has argued in the First and Fourth Circuits. Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Douglas H. Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for the Honorable Richard J. Leon on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Ms. Owings handles all aspects of merger review. She draws on her first-hand experience investigating and reviewing mergers at the Antitrust Division to advise clients and to represent them in front of the agencies. She has special experience in merger matters with complex legal questions, for instance vertical mergers, the acquisition of a nascent or potential competitor, and the implications of a merger on innovation and data accumulation.
Professor, The University of South Dakota School of Law
Biography
Patrick Garry is a professor of law at The University of South Dakota and the Director of the Hagemann Center for Legal & Public Policy Research.
Professor Garry has published more than forty scholarly articles and authored ten books, many of which have been the subject of numerous conferences and symposia. Professor Garry has been invited on several occasions to testify before Congress on legal and constitutional matters, and he is a frequent speaker at Federalist Society sponsored events. Aside from his public speaking appearances, Professor Garry often writes for popular audience websites, magazines, and newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and Washington Times. These writings offer commentary and analysis of current political and legal issues.
Professor Garry received his Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Minnesota. And he has been invited to teach as a visiting professor at the George Washington University Law School, the University of Utah School of Law, the University of Missouri School of Law, and the University of St. Thomas School of Law.
United States District Judge, United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida
Biography
In November 2020, the Senate confirmed Kathryn Kimball Mizelle as a United States District Judge for the Middle District of Florida. At age 33, she became the youngest Article III judge in the country. Prior to her confirmation, Judge Mizelle was in private practice at Jones Day, where she focused on complex civil and criminal litigation and appeals. Judge Mizelle previously served at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, in the Southern Criminal Enforcement Section of the Tax Division, and in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Judge Mizelle has also taught as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School.
Judge Mizelle earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Covenant College, and her J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. After graduation, Judge Mizelle served as a law clerk at every level of the federal judiciary: at the Supreme Court for Justice Clarence Thomas, at the D.C. Circuit for Judge Gregory G. Katsas, at the Eleventh Circuit for Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr., and at the Middle District of Florida for Judge James S. Moody Jr.
Judge, United States District Court for the District of Minnesota
Biography
After being nominated by President Donald J. Trump in February 2018, Judge Tostrud was confirmed to the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota by the U.S. Senate in September 2018. Judge Tostrud spent his entire career as a practicing lawyer with the Minneapolis firm Lockridge Grindal Nauen. He was an associate with the firm from 1992 to 1997, a partner from 1998 through 2014, and of counsel from 2015 through his appointment to the federal bench. During his time with the firm, Judge Tostrud maintained a complex litigation practice concentrated almost exclusively in the federal courts primarily in the health care, insurance coverage, fraud, and financial services fields. His pro bono service included representing military veterans before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. While in practice, Judge Tostrud taught often as an adjunct professor at William Mitchell College of Law and at the University of Minnesota Law School. In 2015, Judge Tostrud began teaching law full time as a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, first at William Mitchell and then at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Judge Tostrud's areas of teaching included legal writing, the federal courts, federal jurisdiction, federal civil procedure, complex litigation, electronic discovery, and the business of lawyering. He received his B.A. in Political Science and Speech cum laude from St. Olaf College in 1987. Judge Tostrud received his J.D. summa cum laude from William Mitchell College of Law in 1990, and he was admitted to the Minnesota Bar in October 1990. He clerked for Judge Edward J. Devitt of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota from 1990 to 1992, and for Judge George E. MacKinnon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1992.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Biography
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., was for 25 years a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation. Prior to that he was Vice President of Domestic Policy at the National Center for Policy Analysis. He is a public policy analyst specializing in health care, entitlements and energy issues and is the author of numerous public policy studies. He is past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists.
For nine years Dr. Matthews was executive director of the Washington, DC-based Council for Affordable Health Insurance, a health insurance trade association. While he was executive director, National Journal recognized the Council as one of the most effective health policy organizations in Washington.
Dr. Matthews served for 10 years as a medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation. He is the co-author of On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff (2019) and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate, The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud). And for several years he co-authored a column on dental ethics for the Texas Dental Journal.
For several years he also served as chairman on the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
He is currently a weekly columnist for The Hill and has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, USA Today and the Washington Times.
Matthews is a frequent guest host on Point of View radio talk show, which airs nationwide. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network, and for several years had a daily one-minute commentary on Sirius-XM Radio. In 2008 and again in 2014, the BBC featured him in a television program on welfare reform in Great Britain, specifically Wales.
Dr. Matthews received a BBA in Economics from the University of Texas at Arlington, an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has a Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. And he is an 8th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Michael J. Marks Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School
Biography
M. Todd Henderson is the Michael J. Marks Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Professor Henderson’s research interests include corporations, securities regulation, and law and economics. He has taught classes ranging from Banking Regulation to Torts to American Indian Law.
Professor Henderson received an engineering degree cum laude from Princeton University in 1993. He worked for several years designing and building dams in California before matriculating at the Law School. While at the Law School, Todd was an editor of the Law Review and captained the Law School's all-University champion intramural football team. He graduated magna cum laude in 1998 and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, Todd served as clerk to the Hon. Dennis Jacobs of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He then practiced appellate litigation at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, DC, and was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company in Boston, where he specialized in counseling telecommunications and high-tech clients on business and regulatory strategy.
Steve Marshall was sworn in as the forty-eighth Attorney General of the State of Alabama on February 10, 2017.
Marshall received his undergraduate education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his legal education at the University of Alabama School of Law, graduating from both with academic honors.
Prior to taking office as Attorney General, Marshall was the District Attorney for Marshall County, a post he held for sixteen years. As District Attorney, Marshall helped draft and pass the Brody Act—a law that makes it a crime to kill or injure an unborn child. Marshall later became the first prosecutor to secure a death sentence under the Brody Act (in a case where a man murdered his pregnant wife and was charged with the homicide of both her and her unborn child). Five years later, when this landmark case was on appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court, Marshall—now Attorney General—had the privilege of successfully defending that conviction.
As Attorney General, Marshall has embraced his role as the state’s chief law-enforcement officer and has committed himself to making Alabama a safer place to live. In January 2018, Marshall launched the Initiative on Violent Crime with the mission to “help cities reclaim their streets, restore the rule of law, and . . . see their communities revived.” Since its launch, the initiative has resulted in the arrests of hundreds of violent offenders.
Marshall serves as a member of the executive committee of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a nod to his demonstrated expertise and leadership on a variety of national policy issues including the opioid crisis, human trafficking, illegal immigration, religious liberty, and the rule of law.
Marshall is a man of deep faith with an impeccable reputation. He is a member of the Church of the Highlands in Montgomery, Alabama.
Marshall is esteemed across Alabama by prosecutors and law enforcement alike. On the day of his inauguration in 2019, nearly every District Attorney in the state came to the capital to show their support for him.
Attorney General Marshall and his wife, Tammy, share three children: Faith Marshall, John Millan Gaston, and Benen Gaston. Another cherished member of the Marshall family is Pippa, their sweet Pomeranian.
District Judge, United States District Court, District of Kansas
Biography
The President nominated Toby Crouse to become a judge for the United States District Court for the District of Kansas on May 21, 2020. The Senate confirmed his nomination on November 17, 2020. President Trump signed his commission on December 2, 2020. He was sworn in December 8, 2020.
From 2018 to 2020, Judge Crouse served as the Solicitor General for the State of Kansas. In that role, he presented two arguments to the United States Supreme Court, Kahler v. Kansas, 140 S. Ct. 1021 (2020), and Kansas v. Glover, 140 S. Ct. 1183 (2020). In addition, he established a solo practice focusing on appellate and constitutional litigation.
Before representing the State of Kansas, he maintained a private practice for fifteen years. Both during law school and after graduation, he worked with and learned from the lawyers at Foulston Siefkin LLP, where he was a partner for seven years, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP, and Bremyer & Wise, LLC (now Wise & Reber, L.C.).
Following law school, Judge Crouse served as a law clerk to two federal judges. From 2002 to 2003, he clerked for the Honorable Mary Beck Briscoe of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He clerked for the Honorable Monti L. Belot of the United States District Court for the District of Kansas from 2000 to 2002.
Judge Crouse is a lifelong Kansan. He obtained his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law and his undergraduate degree from Kansas State University.
Professor at the University of Richmond School of Law
Biography
Speaker Information
Jason Torchinsky
Partner, Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC
Biography
Jason Torchinsky is a partner at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak PLLC, specializing in campaign finance, election law, lobbying disclosure and issue advocacy groups. Politico recently named him one of the “50 Politicos to Watch,” and in 2007, Campaigns and Elections Magazine named him a “Rising Star of Politics.”
In addition to his practice counseling clients on compliance with campaign finance, ethics laws, lobbying disclosure and election laws, Mr. Torchinsky has served as lead counsel in a number of litigation matters. Representative matters in the redistricting area include Louisiana House of Representatives v. Holder (D.D.C.) (Section 5 pre-clearance action), City of Sandy Springs v. Holder (D.D.C.) (Section 5 bailout action), and Fletcher v. Lamone (D. Md.) (challenging Maryland’s Congressional Districting map). In the campaign finance context, he is currently representing clients in Alliance for America’s Future v. State (Nevada Supreme Court) and Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission (D.D.C.) (Representing intervenor defendants). He has also represented Virginia candidates in recounts and voter registration challenges before various Virginia Circuit Courts.
Mr. Torchinsky frequently lectures on campaign finance redistricting and ethics related subjects and provides commentary to the media on election related matters.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Torchinsky was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. During the 2004 election cycle, he served as Deputy General Counsel to Bush-Cheney ’04 and Deputy General Counsel to the 2005 Presidential Inaugural Committee.
He holds a B.A. in Government and Public Policy from the College of William and Mary and a J.D. from the College of William and Mary School of Law. He is a member of the Virginia Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, the Republican National Lawyers Association and the Federalist Society.
