Associate General Counsel, Synthetic Biology Company
Tyler Clarkson works as an Associate General Counsel at a synthetic biology company handling all regulatory and compliance matters. Tyler previously served as the Deputy General Counsel, Principal Deputy General Counsel, and Acting General Counsel at USDA. He also worked as a Counselor to the Administrator at OIRA. Previously, he worked as an associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer focusing largely on global investigations. Tyler attended college and law school at UVA; while in law school, Tyler served as the president of the UVA Law Federalist Society chapter.
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, The George Washington University Law School
Aram A. Gavoor is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and an internationally recognized scholar in American administrative law, national security, and federal courts. His co-authored work was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Department of Commerce v. New York (2019). His scholarship has earned placement in the Florida Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Ohio State Law Journal, and other law journals. He has briefed and argued over a dozen high-profile public law cases before a majority of the U.S. Courts of Appeals and numerous cases before almost a third of the 94 U.S. District Courts. Associate Dean Gavoor frequently shares his national security, artificial intelligence policy, and federal courts expertise with international news media, including CNN, BBC World News, Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and ABC (Australia) World News. In 2021, the National Law Journal named Associate Dean Gavoor a Rising Star (top 40 under 40) honoree.
Earlier in his career, Associate Dean Gavoor served as Senior Counsel for National Security in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, as third-in-rank Counselor to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, and in private practice. He received the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 2019, the Civil Division Special Commendation Award in 2020, 2019, and 2018, and a Commendation from the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section of the Criminal Division in 2018.
Associate Dean Gavoor previously served on the law school’s part-time faculty from 2008-2017 before accepting a term-limited position as Visiting Associate Professor from 2017-2019. He received GW Law’s Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award from the 2020 and 2017 graduating classes. He currently teaches Constitutional Law II, Administrative Law, National Security Law, and Federal Courts.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
Professor Pierce is author of over twenty books and 130 articles on administrative law, government regulation, and the effects of various forms of government intervention on the performance of markets. His books and articles have been cited in hundreds of judicial opinions, including over a dozen opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
The Honorable Susan C. Rodriguez was sworn-in as a U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Western District of North Carolina on April 3, 2023. She was selected through a Merit Selection Panel, comprised of both attorneys throughout the district and community representatives. Judge Rodriguez was previously a partner at the law firm, McGuireWoods LLP, where she was the co-leader of the firm’s financial institutions industry team. Her private practice experience focused on government investigations and white-collar matters. She has represented clients in numerous government investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), among others. She was recognized for her outstanding work for clients through Chambers rankings in both 2022 and 2023 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations in North Carolina and nationally for Fintech Legal: Corporate, Securities & Financing. Susan also was named to “North Carolina Rising Stars,” Government Relations, Super Lawyers, 2017-2019.
Before joining McGuireWoods in 2011, Susan served as a legal policy advisor at the Department of Homeland Security. Susan also served as federal law clerk for the Honorable Frank D. Whitney, U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of North Carolina, handling both civil and criminal matters. Prior to that, she was a presidential appointee, serving as a staffer in the White House Counsel’s office from 2005-2006, handling management of judicial nominations and assisting with responses to congressional investigations.
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Managing Partner, Deaton Law Firm
John Deaton, Managing Partner of the Deaton Law Firm, founded his law practice in 2006. Prior to establishing DLF, John worked for a national plaintiffs’ firm, specializing in asbestos litigation, products liability, toxic torts, and personal injury. John also served as one of the firm’s principal trial attorneys in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. John tried cases against national defense lawyers, litigation firms, and high profile corporations. He earned a reputation as an aggressive but fair trial advocate.
Prior to his work as a plaintiffs’ attorney, John joined the United States Marine Corp while in law school. In 1994, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. John served as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney for seven years of active duty. He tried dozens of jury trials to verdict throughout his career. As a direct result of his efforts, John was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and was selected to the rank of Major.
John attended law school at the New England School of Law and graduated Cum Laude in 1995. At New England School of Law, John received the American Jurisprudence Award for Clinical Evidence and was selected for the law school’s National Mock Trial Team, an honor awarded to few. John graduated Magna Cum Laude from Eastern Michigan University in 1989.
University Professor and Clayton N. Little Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law
Professor Goforth specializes in business associations and securities regulation, and she has become a leading expert on the regulation of cryptoassets and transactions. West Academic published her new textbook, Regulation of Cryptotransactions, in March 2020. To the best of her knowledge, this was the first comprehensive textbook on the subject. She writes and comments frequently on crypto, including serving as an expert commentator for CoinTelegraph, with her posts regularly receiving thousands of views. She is also on the board of advisors to Honeycomb Digital Investments.
In 1999, she was elected to the prestigious American Law Institute, which welcomes distinguished federal and state judges, lawyers, and law professors. She has also been an official observer to a Uniform Law Commission drafting committee, and serves as the Arkansas Liaison to the Corporate Laws Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. She is also a member of the Academic Faculty Network at the Sam M. Walton College of Business Blockchain Center of Excellence.
Prof. Goforth is a University Professor and the Clayton N. Little Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She is a former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a former Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor of Law.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
President, Committee for Justice
Curt Levey is President of the Committee For Justice, an organization devoted to advancing constitutionally limited government and individual liberty. He is a veteran of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmation battles and serves on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group.
After graduating Harvard Law School with honors and clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Mr. Levey served as Director of Legal & Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR). There he worked on landmark Supreme Court cases, including the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and the successful constitutional challenge to the Violence Against Women Act. After CIR, Mr. Levey headed the Title IX policy group at the U.S. Department of Education.
Before attending law school, Mr. Levey earned an M.S. and B.A. in computer science from Brown University and worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He invented a new type of AI technology, for which he wrote a successful patent application.
Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Alice M. Batchelder obtained her first judicial post as a judge on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio in 1983. After two years, she was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. In 1991 President George H.W. Bush appointed her to her position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. From August 2009 to August 2014, Judge Batchelder served as Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit. In March 2019, she took Senior Status and continues to work nearly full time.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Jesse, the former third-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice, helps clients with their most difficult litigation and regulatory issues─whether that means defending against an enforcement action, pursuing high-stakes litigation and appeals, navigating regulatory thickets at federal and state agencies, or crafting a comprehensive strategy to manage a crisis. He approaches these problems with the knowledge gained both from his broad private-practice experience and from having served at the highest levels of federal and state government.
Jesse has experience across a range of substantive and regulatory areas. He has sued the federal government and has also been one of its top law-enforcement officials; he has represented states and has also navigated their regulatory agencies on behalf of clients; and he has represented companies in business disputes, both as defendants and plaintiffs.
Before joining the firm, Jesse was the Acting Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he oversaw the civil and criminal work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. During Jesse’s tenure, the Associate’s office closely managed the Department’s most significant litigation, including matters involving large financial institutions, healthcare companies, automakers, energy companies, and state and local governments. In addition, Jesse served as Chair of DOJ’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and Vice Chair of DOJ’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. Jesse regularly provided legal and strategic advice to the highest-level decision makers in the federal government, including the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, general counsels across the spectrum of federal agencies, and White House officials.
Jesse served for three years as the secretary of Florida’s labor, economic-development, and land-use agency, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Before that, he served as Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott’s general counsel.
Jesse maintains offices in both Washington D.C. and Florida. From Washington, he focuses on federal litigation and crisis management. In Florida, in addition to federal litigation, Jesse employs his knowledge of state government and regulation to help clients in courts across the state, from trial through the Florida Supreme Court.
Jesse currently serves on the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, the body that provides the governor with nominees for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Jesse is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he writes and speaks about administrative law.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
JUSTIN SAVAGE is a global co-leader of the firm’s Environmental, Health, and Safety practice and co-leads the Automotive and Mobility sector team, where he is a leading strategist for companies navigating the intersection of complex regulation, high-stakes litigation, and transformative industry change. For nearly three decades, he has led clients through their most consequential environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) disputes and mobility-sector challenges, earning a reputation as both a trusted counselor and a forceful advocate in the courtroom and the boardroom. A core part of Justin’s practice also focuses on regulatory strategy and market entry, advising emerging technology companies, new market entrants, and established industry leaders on launching new products, technologies, and business models. He regularly counsel clients in emerging fields such as robotics and AI on engaging with regulators, anticipating enforcement and compliance risk, and building defensible regulatory strategies that support growth rather than slow it.
Clients praise Justin as “an excellent litigator… strategically clever and creative… attentive, thoughtful and willing to go above and beyond” (Chambers USA 2025). Chambers USA has ranked him for Band 1 for Environment in District of Columbia (2017–2025) and Band 3 for Transportation: Road (Automotive) in USA—Nationwide (2023–2025).
Justin has won some of the most closely watched EH&S and transportation disputes of the past two decades and guided companies through crises where business continuity, brand reputation, and regulatory survival were on the line. His leadership has been repeatedly recognized: he is a three-time Law360 Environmental “MVP” (2018, 2024, 2025) and a Lawdragon “500 Global Leaders in Crisis Management” (2025-2026). He is the first call for companies facing bet-the-company challenges.
Justin’s clients concentrate in heavily regulated industries, including auto and mobility, aviation, chemicals, data centers, energy, mining, and refining. Justin litigates and counsels across the spectrum of U.S. environmental, transportation, and administrative laws, including the Clean Air Act (Title I, mobile sources, and fuels), incident response, RMP, NHTSA, Clean Water Act, TSCA, CSB investigations, APA claims, FOIA litigation, NEPA, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Prior to joining Sidley, Justin served for nearly a decade at the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led teams in several multi-billion dollar enforcement cases. In his career, Justin has regularly taught on a range of environmental and litigation topics. For several years, Justin served as an instructor at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center where he taught hundreds of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and other agency lawyers on topics that included trial advocacy and evidence. Since rejoining private practice, Justin has served eight times as a faculty member for the American Law Institute’s Environmental Litigation program. He also lectured on a range of litigation and trial topics for bar associations and organizations, including serving as an instructor for the FAA on trial advocacy.
President and General Counsel, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Anna St. John is an attorney with the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute. She began working with the Center for Class Action Fairness, which has since moved to HLLI, in March 2015. She has argued appeals before the Second, Seventh, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits and state courts in New York and California, and presented argument to over a dozen federal and state trial courts. Her work has led to the return of over $100 million in settlement funds to class members.
Previously, she clerked for the Honorable Rhesa H. Barksdale on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and was an attorney with Covington & Burling LLP.
St. John is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was named a James Kent Scholar. She is a member of the state bars of New York and Louisiana and the District of Columbia Bar. She has spoken on topics of class action fairness, government overreach and regulatory abuses, the First Amendment, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
She resides in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Senior Fellow and Director of Finance Policy, Competitive Enterprise Institute
John Berlau is a senior fellow and Director of Finance Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His work focuses on how public policy affects access to capital, entrepreneurship, and investments made by the public and business community alike. In recent years, he has studied the consequences of financial reform efforts passed by Congress like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis including the Dodd-Frank Act, the placement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, and the rise of cryptocurrency.
He is also the author of the book George Washington: Entrepreneur: How Our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World. The book received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal and other forums, and was endorsed by eminent historians and scholars such as Richard Brookhiser, Amity Shlaes, and Craig Shirley.
Berlau is a contributing writer for Forbes. His work has been published and cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Politico, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Investor’s Business Daily, National Journal, National Review, American Spectator, Reason Magazine, and more. He is a frequent guest on radio and television programs, including CNBC’s “The Call,” “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell,” Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and Fox Business’ “Cavuto.”
He has testified on the impact of financial regulation before the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. A recognized expert on the phenomenon of crowdfunding, Berlau has spoken at prominent conferences such as South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Money 20/20 in Las Vegas, the FinTech Global Expo in San Diego, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit in San Francisco and the Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates (CFIRA) Summit in Washington, D.C. He is also author of the widely cited paper “Declaration of Crowdfunding Independence: Finance of the People, by the People, and for the People.”
Berlau is an award-winning financial and political journalist. He served as Washington correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily and as a staff writer for Insight magazine, published by The Washington Times. In 2002, he received the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism from Washington’s National Press Club. He was a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2003. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1994 with degrees in journalism and economics.
Managing Partner, Deaton Law Firm
John Deaton, Managing Partner of the Deaton Law Firm, founded his law practice in 2006. Prior to establishing DLF, John worked for a national plaintiffs’ firm, specializing in asbestos litigation, products liability, toxic torts, and personal injury. John also served as one of the firm’s principal trial attorneys in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. John tried cases against national defense lawyers, litigation firms, and high profile corporations. He earned a reputation as an aggressive but fair trial advocate.
Prior to his work as a plaintiffs’ attorney, John joined the United States Marine Corp while in law school. In 1994, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. John served as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney for seven years of active duty. He tried dozens of jury trials to verdict throughout his career. As a direct result of his efforts, John was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and was selected to the rank of Major.
John attended law school at the New England School of Law and graduated Cum Laude in 1995. At New England School of Law, John received the American Jurisprudence Award for Clinical Evidence and was selected for the law school’s National Mock Trial Team, an honor awarded to few. John graduated Magna Cum Laude from Eastern Michigan University in 1989.
University Professor and Clayton N. Little Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law
Professor Goforth specializes in business associations and securities regulation, and she has become a leading expert on the regulation of cryptoassets and transactions. West Academic published her new textbook, Regulation of Cryptotransactions, in March 2020. To the best of her knowledge, this was the first comprehensive textbook on the subject. She writes and comments frequently on crypto, including serving as an expert commentator for CoinTelegraph, with her posts regularly receiving thousands of views. She is also on the board of advisors to Honeycomb Digital Investments.
In 1999, she was elected to the prestigious American Law Institute, which welcomes distinguished federal and state judges, lawyers, and law professors. She has also been an official observer to a Uniform Law Commission drafting committee, and serves as the Arkansas Liaison to the Corporate Laws Committee of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. She is also a member of the Academic Faculty Network at the Sam M. Walton College of Business Blockchain Center of Excellence.
Prof. Goforth is a University Professor and the Clayton N. Little Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She is a former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a former Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor of Law.
Senior Vice President, Strand Consult
Roslyn Layton, PhD is a leading international expert on technology policy. She is Senior Vice President of Strand Consult, an independent consultancy serving the global mobile telecom industry. She is also a Visiting Researcher at Aalborg University Copenhagen where she earned a doctoral thesis on network neutrality by measuring the outcome of the policy across 53 countries over 5 years. She served on the Presidential Transition Team for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and her work was critical to the FCC’s defense for the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. She has testified to the United States Senate and House on multiple topics including spectrum, broadband, mobile mergers, competition, and privacy. She founded the think tank China Tech Threat to study the problems of technology produced by the People’s Republic of China. She serves as the Program Chair for the Telecom Policy Research Conference, the leading interdisciplinary academic gathering. Her recent paper on rural broadband describes the empirical case for policy reform to recover network infrastructure costs from streaming video entertainment providers. She is a Senior Contributor to Forbes.
President, Committee for Justice
Curt Levey is President of the Committee For Justice, an organization devoted to advancing constitutionally limited government and individual liberty. He is a veteran of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmation battles and serves on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group.
After graduating Harvard Law School with honors and clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Mr. Levey served as Director of Legal & Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR). There he worked on landmark Supreme Court cases, including the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and the successful constitutional challenge to the Violence Against Women Act. After CIR, Mr. Levey headed the Title IX policy group at the U.S. Department of Education.
Before attending law school, Mr. Levey earned an M.S. and B.A. in computer science from Brown University and worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He invented a new type of AI technology, for which he wrote a successful patent application.
Cory Fish served as Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce’s General Counsel & Director of Tax, Transportation and Legal Affairs from 2017-2021. In that role he advocated on his members’ behalf before the administrative state, legislature, and judiciary to help resolve statutory, regulatory, and permitting concerns and generally ensure their interests were protected. Prior to joining WMC in 2017, Cory worked for in a series of roles for the State of Wisconsin.
Most recently he worked for State Senator Alberta Darling, Co-Chair of the powerful Joint Committee on Finance, serving as her Legal Counsel. He also advised Sen. Darling on budget and policy issues ranging from higher education and regulatory reform to natural resources and transportation.
Cory earned a B.A. from UW-Eau Claire, Summa Cum Laude, and a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he graduated Cum Laude. He is a licensed attorney in Wisconsin.
Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Alice M. Batchelder obtained her first judicial post as a judge on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio in 1983. After two years, she was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. In 1991 President George H.W. Bush appointed her to her position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. From August 2009 to August 2014, Judge Batchelder served as Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit. In March 2019, she took Senior Status and continues to work nearly full time.
Partner, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
Jesse, the former third-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Justice, helps clients with their most difficult litigation and regulatory issues─whether that means defending against an enforcement action, pursuing high-stakes litigation and appeals, navigating regulatory thickets at federal and state agencies, or crafting a comprehensive strategy to manage a crisis. He approaches these problems with the knowledge gained both from his broad private-practice experience and from having served at the highest levels of federal and state government.
Jesse has experience across a range of substantive and regulatory areas. He has sued the federal government and has also been one of its top law-enforcement officials; he has represented states and has also navigated their regulatory agencies on behalf of clients; and he has represented companies in business disputes, both as defendants and plaintiffs.
Before joining the firm, Jesse was the Acting Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice. In that role, he oversaw the civil and criminal work of the Antitrust, Civil, Civil Rights, Environment and Natural Resources, and Tax Divisions. During Jesse’s tenure, the Associate’s office closely managed the Department’s most significant litigation, including matters involving large financial institutions, healthcare companies, automakers, energy companies, and state and local governments. In addition, Jesse served as Chair of DOJ’s Regulatory Reform Task Force and Vice Chair of DOJ’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. Jesse regularly provided legal and strategic advice to the highest-level decision makers in the federal government, including the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, general counsels across the spectrum of federal agencies, and White House officials.
Jesse served for three years as the secretary of Florida’s labor, economic-development, and land-use agency, the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. Before that, he served as Governor (now Senator) Rick Scott’s general counsel.
Jesse maintains offices in both Washington D.C. and Florida. From Washington, he focuses on federal litigation and crisis management. In Florida, in addition to federal litigation, Jesse employs his knowledge of state government and regulation to help clients in courts across the state, from trial through the Florida Supreme Court.
Jesse currently serves on the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission, the body that provides the governor with nominees for appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Jesse is also a fellow at the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he writes and speaks about administrative law.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
JUSTIN SAVAGE is a global co-leader of the firm’s Environmental, Health, and Safety practice and co-leads the Automotive and Mobility sector team, where he is a leading strategist for companies navigating the intersection of complex regulation, high-stakes litigation, and transformative industry change. For nearly three decades, he has led clients through their most consequential environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) disputes and mobility-sector challenges, earning a reputation as both a trusted counselor and a forceful advocate in the courtroom and the boardroom. A core part of Justin’s practice also focuses on regulatory strategy and market entry, advising emerging technology companies, new market entrants, and established industry leaders on launching new products, technologies, and business models. He regularly counsel clients in emerging fields such as robotics and AI on engaging with regulators, anticipating enforcement and compliance risk, and building defensible regulatory strategies that support growth rather than slow it.
Clients praise Justin as “an excellent litigator… strategically clever and creative… attentive, thoughtful and willing to go above and beyond” (Chambers USA 2025). Chambers USA has ranked him for Band 1 for Environment in District of Columbia (2017–2025) and Band 3 for Transportation: Road (Automotive) in USA—Nationwide (2023–2025).
Justin has won some of the most closely watched EH&S and transportation disputes of the past two decades and guided companies through crises where business continuity, brand reputation, and regulatory survival were on the line. His leadership has been repeatedly recognized: he is a three-time Law360 Environmental “MVP” (2018, 2024, 2025) and a Lawdragon “500 Global Leaders in Crisis Management” (2025-2026). He is the first call for companies facing bet-the-company challenges.
Justin’s clients concentrate in heavily regulated industries, including auto and mobility, aviation, chemicals, data centers, energy, mining, and refining. Justin litigates and counsels across the spectrum of U.S. environmental, transportation, and administrative laws, including the Clean Air Act (Title I, mobile sources, and fuels), incident response, RMP, NHTSA, Clean Water Act, TSCA, CSB investigations, APA claims, FOIA litigation, NEPA, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Prior to joining Sidley, Justin served for nearly a decade at the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led teams in several multi-billion dollar enforcement cases. In his career, Justin has regularly taught on a range of environmental and litigation topics. For several years, Justin served as an instructor at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center where he taught hundreds of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and other agency lawyers on topics that included trial advocacy and evidence. Since rejoining private practice, Justin has served eight times as a faculty member for the American Law Institute’s Environmental Litigation program. He also lectured on a range of litigation and trial topics for bar associations and organizations, including serving as an instructor for the FAA on trial advocacy.
President and General Counsel, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Anna St. John is an attorney with the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute. She began working with the Center for Class Action Fairness, which has since moved to HLLI, in March 2015. She has argued appeals before the Second, Seventh, Ninth, and D.C. Circuits and state courts in New York and California, and presented argument to over a dozen federal and state trial courts. Her work has led to the return of over $100 million in settlement funds to class members.
Previously, she clerked for the Honorable Rhesa H. Barksdale on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and was an attorney with Covington & Burling LLP.
St. John is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was named a James Kent Scholar. She is a member of the state bars of New York and Louisiana and the District of Columbia Bar. She has spoken on topics of class action fairness, government overreach and regulatory abuses, the First Amendment, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
She resides in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Administrative Inquisitions? How Agencies Initiate, Conduct, and Conclude Investigations
2021 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCTopics
Arbitrary and Capricious Review at the Court After FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project: From the Return of “Hard Look” to the “Zone of Reasonableness”
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) instructs courts to “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings,...
Topics
Separate Payments for Abortion Services and Other Changes in HHS’s Proposed Insurance Regulations
On June 28, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (along with...
Deep Dive Episode 185 – SEC v. Ripple Labs: Cryptocurrency and “Regulation by Enforcement”
John Berlau, John Deaton, Carol Goforth, Roslyn Layton, Curt Levey
In recent years, a number of regulatory agencies have increasingly utilized enforcement actions rather than...
Deep Dive Episode 185 – SEC v. Ripple Labs: Cryptocurrency and “Regulation by Enforcement”
Regulatory Transparency Project's Fourth Branch Podcast
TeleforumState Court Docket Watch: Tavern League of Wisconsin, Inc. v. Andrea Palm
Corydon James Fish
Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
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Injunctions Highlight Challenge Targeting China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy
This spring, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued two preliminary injunctions...
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Yet Another Federal Court Rules Against the CDC Eviction Moratorium
Note: This blog was originally posted at the Volokh Conspiracy. Earlier today, the Judge...
Settlement Payments to Non-Governmental Third Parties
Litigation Practice Group
Settlement Payments to Non-Governmental Third Parties
Alice Batchelder, Jesse Panuccio, Justin Savage, Anna St. John
President Biden, on his first day in office, signed Executive Order 13990, which ordered all...