Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission
Andrew N. Ferguson was sworn in April 2, 2024 as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. President Joe Biden named Ferguson to a term that expires on September 25, 2030.
Ferguson most recently served as solicitor general of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Prior to that position, he served as chief counsel to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and as a Republican counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He also practiced law at several Washington, D.C. law firms. He earned his undergraduate degree and law degree from the University of Virginia. After law school, Ferguson clerked for Judge Karen L. Henderson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Partner, Torridon Law PLLC
Mike Fragoso is an experienced legal and policy strategist who represents clients before all three branches of the federal government. Most recently he served as chief counsel to the Senate Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY). He has negotiated consequential legislation, managed successful congressional oversight, and prepared individuals for the most contentious Senate hearings.
As chief counsel to Leader McConnell, Mike was the Leader’s primary legal advisor and managed the “last mile” of any legislation touching on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He ran the 2024 reauthorization of FISA Section 702 and was involved at the highest levels of the appropriations and budget-reconciliation processes. Mike also repeatedly represented Leader McConnell as counsel of record at the Supreme Court. Leader McConnell said of Mike that he’s “equally at home in the high-minded philosophical discourse of the legal community and the urgent pragmatism of congressional dealmaking,” and that he “maintains a firm grasp on the realm of the possible” but “knows which screws to twist.” He observed that Mike “is so exceptionally competent that he often produces from his desk the work that would normally require, literally, teams of outside counsel.”
President and CEO, The Federalist Society
Sheldon Gilbert is the President and CEO of The Federalist Society. Gilbert has been involved in the conservative and libertarian legal movement since law school, and has served in prominent roles at both nonprofit organizations as well as corporate America.
A longtime constitutional litigator, Gilbert has represented clients through amicus and party briefs in nearly a hundred cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, at both the certiorari and merits stages. Most recently, Gilbert served as Senior Lead Counsel for Strategic Initiatives at Walmart, the world’s largest company, where he led teams providing legal advice related to government enforcement, internal investigations, government relations, public relations, and special projects at the center of law and policy.
Before joining Walmart, Gilbert served as Vice President for Content and Development and Senior Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the National Constitution Center, a congressionally chartered non-partisan center for constitutional education and debate, where he led both fundraising and programming efforts. While at the NCC, Gilbert helped ensure that the Center’s programming and exhibits incorporated constitutional perspectives from experts on both the right and the left, including the launch of the Center’s landmark permanent exhibit on the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments.
Prior to the National Constitution Center, Gilbert served as the director of the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement (CJE), where he educated the public about the role of the courts and the Constitution, where he frequently hosted discussions and debates on constitutional issues, and often spoke at Federalist Society lawyer and student chapters across the country.
He was also a litigator with the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, the litigation arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he represented the U.S. Chamber in over 400 cases in federal and state courts addressing a wide range of legal issues, from free speech to property rights.
Gilbert is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School where he helped found a first-of-its-kind National Religious Freedom Moot Court, which hosted law students from across the country to debate important, emerging religious liberty issues. After graduating from GWU, he also taught as a professorial lecturer at the school.
A graduate of the University of Utah, Gilbert is a child of the Mountain West, where he was born in a coal mining town in Utah and raised in Idaho near the Grand Tetons. Before going to law school, Gilbert’s diverse interests led him to work in a wide range of roles, from software development project management for a nonprofit, to working in his University’s radiobiology research lab, to volunteer service in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for his church.
Gilbert is married with four children.
Shareholder, D.C. Office Managing Shareholder
Lee is a former Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Judiciary Committee for then-Chairman Lindsey Graham, Deputy Counsel to Vice President J.D. Vance, and federal prosecutor who serves as Managing Shareholder of Maynard Nexsen’s Washington, D.C. office. He has deep experience in all three branches of the federal government, stand-up courtroom experience, and extensive knowledge of Washington, D.C.
While serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lee played a central role in some of the most consequential legislative, nominations, and oversight efforts in recent years. He led Supreme Court and Attorney General confirmation hearings, guided politically charged negotiations on the First Step Act, police reform, the CARES Act, and the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, and oversaw the Committee’s work on the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation. Lee also helped advance the CLOUD Act and major intellectual property legislation, including the Defend Trade Secrets Act, the Music Modernization Act, and the CASE Act. Over his seven-year Senate career, he handled the Committee’s authorization of subpoenas, participated in transcribed interviews, managed public communications campaigns, and prepared witnesses and nominees for high-profile hearings—culminating in his service as a key advisor to Republican Senators during both impeachments of President Donald Trump.
As a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, Lee managed a diverse criminal and civil litigation docket, including first chair of a felony trial, briefing appeals, and arguing in the Fourth Circuit. Lee defended the United States in civil suits under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), and also served as the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) prosecutor for the South Carolina U.S. Attorney's Office. Before joining Maynard Nexsen, Lee served in the White House, where he provided strategic and legal advice to the Office of the Vice President.
Lee earned his law degree at the Vanderbilt University Law School and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and International Affairs from Florida State University. He clerked for the Honorable Joseph F. Anderson, Jr. on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina and briefly on the Fourth Circuit when Judge Anderson sat on that court by designation.
Senior Director, Microsoft, Former Staff Director and Chief Counsel, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
Judge Julius “Jay” Richardson serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Jay grew up in Barnwell, South Carolina. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, Jay moved to Hawaii and worked at a pool-side bar-and-grill. Jay later earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as Articles Editor for the Law Review and right fielder for the law school’s championship softball team. Following law school, Jay clerked for Judge Richard A. Posner and for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. He then practiced with Kellogg Hansen in Washington, DC before returning to South Carolina as an Assistant United States Attorney. Along with prosecuting violent crime, gangs, terrorism, public corruption, civil rights, and narcotics trafficking, he led the prosecution of Dylann Roof, who was convicted and sentenced to death for his racist massacre of nine Black worshippers during a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. He and his wife Macon are blessed with four daughters.
Securities Lawyer
He regularly represents clients before U.S. federal and state financial regulatory authorities, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He also represents clients in filing comment letters and amicus briefs in connection with SEC rulemakings.
Associate Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Associate Professor of Law J.W. Verret joined the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University faculty in 2008. In 2013, he took leave for two years to serve as the Chief Economist and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. He received his JD and MA in Public Policy from Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, respectively, in 2006. While in law school, Professor Verret served an Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics at the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance under the guidance of Prof. Lucian Bebchuk.
Professor Verret then served as a law clerk for Vice-Chancellor John W. Noble of the Delaware Court of Chancery. Prior to joining the faculty at Scalia Law, Professor Verret was an associate in the SEC Enforcement Defense Practice Group at Skadden, Arps in Washington, D.C. He has written extensively on corporate law topics, including Delaware's Guidance, co-written with Chief Justice Myron T. Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court. His academic work has been featured in the Yale Journal on Regulation, The Business Lawyer, the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, the Stanford Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, and the Virginia Law and Business Review. Professor Verret was selected by the Northwestern Law School Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth for a 2009-2010 Searle-Kaufmann Research Fellowship.
Professor Verret is also a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Working Group on Financial Markets, where he regularly briefs Congressional staff, members of Congress, SEC Commissioners and other financial regulatory agencies on financial regulation topics. He also directs the Corporate Federalism Initiative, where he obtains research grants for a network of students and faculty scholars who study the division between states and the federal government as sources of corporate law. Professor Verret has been invited to testify before various House and Senate Committees four times during the financial crisis of 2009 regarding all of the central provisions of the Obama Administration's 2009 financial regulatory reform proposals. For a full list of Professor Verret's C-Span appearances, including testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, see http://www.c-spanvideo.org/jwverret.
Professor Verret has been an invited panelist for various television appearances, including an interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Professor Verret has been quoted in various media on financial regulation and corporate law topics, including the New York Times, CNN Money, the CNN Political Ticker, CNBC, ABC News, Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, The American Banker, The American Lawyer, The Huffington Post, CBS.com, and AP News. Professor Verret's op-eds have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Orange County Register, and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Verret is also a regular guest contributor to three of the most noted corporate law and financial regulation law blogs: the Harvard Law School Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation Forum, Deallawyers.com, and The Conglomerate.
Vice President, Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, Advancing American Freedom
John G. Malcolm oversees Advancing American Freedom’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as Vice President of the organization’s Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law. Malcolm brings to the challenge a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors.
Prior to joining Advancing American Freedom in 2025, Malcolm was the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government and the Director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in 2012, Malcolm was general counsel at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as a distinguished practitioner in residence at Pepperdine Law School. From 2004 to 2009, Malcolm was executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association.
Malcolm served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division from 2001 to 2004, where he oversaw sections on computer crime and intellectual property, domestic security, child exploitation and obscenity, and special investigations. Immediately prior to that, he was a founding partner in the Atlanta law firm of Malcolm & Schroeder, LLP.
From 1990 to 1997, Malcolm was an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta, assigned to the fraud and public corruption section, and also an associate independent counsel, investigating fraud and abuse in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He was honored with the Director’s Award for Superior Performance for his work in connection with the successful prosecution of Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who assassinated an 11th Circuit judge and the head of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP.
A graduate of Harvard Law School and Columbia College, Malcolm began his career as a law clerk to a federal district court judge and a federal appellate court judge, and as an associate at the Atlanta-based law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan (new Eversheds Sutherland).
Malcolm, who resides in Washington, D.C., serves on the Board of Trustees of the Washington National Opera and is a Senate-confirmed member of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States.
Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley; Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, The Civitas Institute, University of Texas at Austin
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
His most recent book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court, co-authored with Robert Delahunty, was published in 2023. Professor Yoo’s other books include Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power; Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War; Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare; and Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George Bush.
He is a co-author of volumes 1 and 2 of R. Rossum, G. Tarr, V. Munoz & J. Yoo American Constitution Law (Routledge, 2026), and a co-editor of the eight-volume series on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, We Hold These Truths, with Yuval Levin and Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court. He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others.
Professor Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He was an official in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on national security and terrorism issues after the 9/11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He has been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, Seoul National University, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Keio University, Trento University, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Professor Yoo supervises the Public Law and Policy Program and the California Constitution Center. He also serves on the boards of Founding Forward, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Ulysses Grant Institute, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. He is a winner of the Federalist Society’s Paul Bator award and the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Originalism Lectureship.
Professor Yoo graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard College.
Lindsey Graham and the Judiciary: A Senate Legacy
Andrew N. Ferguson, Michael Fragoso, Sheldon Gilbert, Lee Holmes, Katherine Nikas, Julius N. Richardson
Hon. Lindsey Graham (1955-2026) For more than two decades, Senator Lindsey Graham was a consequential...
What Could the Next Administration’s SEC Agenda Look Like?
C. Wallace DeWitt, J.W. Verret
With the upcoming shift in presidential administrations, there is a potential for significant changes within...
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Cabinet Officials Descend on Congress
The 118th Congress has spent the last few days voting on a spending bill to fund...
Conservatives Talk Presidential Power: Disqualification & Contempt
John G. Malcolm, John C. Yoo
As we enter the new year, John Malcolm and John Yoo examine the latest regarding...
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Bill Re-Introduced in Attempt to End Cuba Embargo
Earlier this month, the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act was re-introduced by a bipartisan...
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Religious Liberty Update on Congressional and Executive Branch Actions
Congress On June 16, 2022, Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Doug LaMalfa of California...