Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023. Her books about free speech include: Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2023); HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018); and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (Scribner 1995), which was republished with a new Preface in 2024 as part of the NYU Classics Series. Her many honors and awards include the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech. She serves on the Advisory Boards of several organizations that do free speech work, including: ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.
Deputy Secretary of Transportation, US Department of Transportation
Steven G. Bradbury was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation on March 13, 2025, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on March 11, 2025. In this role, he oversees the Department’s operating administrations and spearheads initiatives to ensure a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system that strengthens economic productivity and global competitiveness. Deputy Secretary Bradbury also assists Secretary Duffy in managing the Department’s activities, including its workforce of over 58,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $109 billion.
Bradbury previously served as the 23rd General Counsel of the Department of Transportation from 2017 to 2021, as the Acting Deputy Secretary from 2019, and as Acting Secretary of Transportation in 2021. As General Counsel, he was the chief legal officer, advising on all legal matters and ensuring the integrity and compliance of the Department’s policies and programs.
Before rejoining DOT, Bradbury was a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation from December 2022 to March 2025. He has extensive experience in the public and private sector, having served as Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge James L. Buckley.
Bradbury holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.
Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Dean and Levin Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
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.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Professor of Law and Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Center, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Stinneford teaches and writes about legal ethics, criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. His work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court, several state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal, and numerous scholars. It has published in numerous scholarly journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review. The Stanford-Yale Junior faculty forum selected one of his articles as the best paper in the category of Constitutional History, and the AALS Criminal Justice Section named another article as the best paper in its Junior Scholars Paper Competition. In the fall of 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown Law Center, Center for the Constitution.
Before joining the Florida faculty in 2009, Stinneford clerked for the Hon. James Moran of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, served as an Assistant United States Attorney, and practiced law with Winston & Strawn in Chicago. Stinneford teaches first-year courses in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law, and upper-level courses in Professional Responsibility, Criminal Procedure, Federal Criminal Law, Law & Literature, and White Collar Crime.
Executive Vice President and General Counsel, National Football League
Ted Ullyot serves as Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the National Football League and is the founder of Highway 50 Ventures, LLC, an investment and advisory firm. A lawyer by background, Ullyot was General Counsel of Facebook from 2008 to 2013. He served in the administration of President George W. Bush, including in the White House as an Associate Counsel and as Deputy Staff Secretary, and in the Justice Department as Chief of Staff to Attorney General Gonzales.
Ullyot began his career as a law clerk, first for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He was a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
At other points in his career, Ullyot served as General Counsel of ESL Investments, Inc.; as General Counsel of AOL Time Warner Europe; as a board member at AutoZone Inc.; and as a partner in the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
He is a member of the board of visitors of the Federalist Society; a member of the University of Chicago Law School Council; and a board member of the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society.
Ullyot graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, after doing his undergraduate work at Harvard. He and his family live in Northern California.
Devon Westhill is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nomination of Westhill on October 7, 2025.
Westhill returns to the USDA where he previously headed the civil rights office as Deputy Assistant Secretary in President Trump’s first term. His previous government appointments also include service at the U.S. Department of Labor, liaison to the Administrative Conference of the U.S., and liaison to the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Prior to returning to government service, Westhill was President and General Counsel of a nonprofit civil rights organization.
Westhill has testified on civil rights matters before Congress, federal agencies, and as an expert witness in federal court. He has spoken hundreds of times at college campuses, conferences, and on radio and TV programs, and he is frequently quoted in print publications, and his writing has appeared in numerous national outlets. A U.S. Navy veteran, Westhill earned his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his JD from the University of Florida.
Deputy Secretary of Transportation, US Department of Transportation
Steven G. Bradbury was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation on March 13, 2025, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on March 11, 2025. In this role, he oversees the Department’s operating administrations and spearheads initiatives to ensure a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system that strengthens economic productivity and global competitiveness. Deputy Secretary Bradbury also assists Secretary Duffy in managing the Department’s activities, including its workforce of over 58,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $109 billion.
Bradbury previously served as the 23rd General Counsel of the Department of Transportation from 2017 to 2021, as the Acting Deputy Secretary from 2019, and as Acting Secretary of Transportation in 2021. As General Counsel, he was the chief legal officer, advising on all legal matters and ensuring the integrity and compliance of the Department’s policies and programs.
Before rejoining DOT, Bradbury was a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation from December 2022 to March 2025. He has extensive experience in the public and private sector, having served as Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge James L. Buckley.
Bradbury holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.
Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Dean and Levin Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
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.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Professor of Law and Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Center, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Stinneford teaches and writes about legal ethics, criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. His work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court, several state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal, and numerous scholars. It has published in numerous scholarly journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review. The Stanford-Yale Junior faculty forum selected one of his articles as the best paper in the category of Constitutional History, and the AALS Criminal Justice Section named another article as the best paper in its Junior Scholars Paper Competition. In the fall of 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown Law Center, Center for the Constitution.
Before joining the Florida faculty in 2009, Stinneford clerked for the Hon. James Moran of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, served as an Assistant United States Attorney, and practiced law with Winston & Strawn in Chicago. Stinneford teaches first-year courses in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law, and upper-level courses in Professional Responsibility, Criminal Procedure, Federal Criminal Law, Law & Literature, and White Collar Crime.
Executive Vice President and General Counsel, National Football League
Ted Ullyot serves as Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the National Football League and is the founder of Highway 50 Ventures, LLC, an investment and advisory firm. A lawyer by background, Ullyot was General Counsel of Facebook from 2008 to 2013. He served in the administration of President George W. Bush, including in the White House as an Associate Counsel and as Deputy Staff Secretary, and in the Justice Department as Chief of Staff to Attorney General Gonzales.
Ullyot began his career as a law clerk, first for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He was a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
At other points in his career, Ullyot served as General Counsel of ESL Investments, Inc.; as General Counsel of AOL Time Warner Europe; as a board member at AutoZone Inc.; and as a partner in the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
He is a member of the board of visitors of the Federalist Society; a member of the University of Chicago Law School Council; and a board member of the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society.
Ullyot graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, after doing his undergraduate work at Harvard. He and his family live in Northern California.
Devon Westhill is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nomination of Westhill on October 7, 2025.
Westhill returns to the USDA where he previously headed the civil rights office as Deputy Assistant Secretary in President Trump’s first term. His previous government appointments also include service at the U.S. Department of Labor, liaison to the Administrative Conference of the U.S., and liaison to the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Prior to returning to government service, Westhill was President and General Counsel of a nonprofit civil rights organization.
Westhill has testified on civil rights matters before Congress, federal agencies, and as an expert witness in federal court. He has spoken hundreds of times at college campuses, conferences, and on radio and TV programs, and he is frequently quoted in print publications, and his writing has appeared in numerous national outlets. A U.S. Navy veteran, Westhill earned his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his JD from the University of Florida.
Deputy Secretary of Transportation, US Department of Transportation
Steven G. Bradbury was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation on March 13, 2025, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on March 11, 2025. In this role, he oversees the Department’s operating administrations and spearheads initiatives to ensure a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system that strengthens economic productivity and global competitiveness. Deputy Secretary Bradbury also assists Secretary Duffy in managing the Department’s activities, including its workforce of over 58,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $109 billion.
Bradbury previously served as the 23rd General Counsel of the Department of Transportation from 2017 to 2021, as the Acting Deputy Secretary from 2019, and as Acting Secretary of Transportation in 2021. As General Counsel, he was the chief legal officer, advising on all legal matters and ensuring the integrity and compliance of the Department’s policies and programs.
Before rejoining DOT, Bradbury was a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation from December 2022 to March 2025. He has extensive experience in the public and private sector, having served as Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge James L. Buckley.
Bradbury holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.
Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Jim Harper is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on privacy issues, and select legal and constitutional law issues.
A lawyer by training, Mr. Harper has served as counsel for the Subcommittee on Commercial, and Administrative Law of the US House Committee on the Judiciary and as counsel for the Senate Committee on Government Affairs. More recently, he worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, where he wrote on the intersection of business, technology, and public policy, including privacy, surveillance, data security, telecommunications, and cryptocurrencies. He also served as global policy counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation. Mr. Harper was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Early in his post-Hill career, he represented companies such as PayPal and Verisign before Congress.
Mr. Harper is the co-editor of “Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It” (Cato Institute, 2010) and the author of “Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood” (Cato Institute, 2006). He has written several amicus briefs in Fourth Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has published scholarly articles in a variety of law journals. In the popular press, Mr. Harper has been published in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.
Mr. Harper has a law degree from the U.C. Hastings College of the Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, and a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Kate Martin is a Senior Fellow at American Progress where she works on issues at the intersection of national security, civil liberties, and human rights. The New York Times’ Taking Note blog described her as “an expert on surveillance and detention, and a leading advocate for the rule of law in the so-called ‘war on terror.’” Before coming to American Progress, Ms. Martin served as director of the Center for National Security Studies for more than 20 years. She frequently testifies before Congress on national security and civil liberties issues. She is also a frequent commentator in the national media and has written extensively on these issues for the past 25 years. At the Center for National Security Studies, Martin brought lawsuits that challenged government deprivations of civil liberties. She has taught national security law and served as general counsel to the National Security Archive.
Ms. Martin is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and Pomona College. Before joining the public interest world, she served as a partner at the law firm of Nussbaum, Owen & Webster.
Founder and Principal, Fillmore Global Strategies LLC
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales is the founder and principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC, a consultancy that provides legal and strategic advisory services on matters at the intersection of law, policy, and diplomacy.
From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting). He oversaw nine bureaus and offices led by Senate-confirmed principals, with 1,300 employees and a combined foreign assistance budget of more than $5 billion annually, and the mission of preventing and countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Concurrently, Ambassador Sales was Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. After being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on August 10, 2017. He served as the principal adviser to the Secretary of State on international counterterrorism matters, and led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a 200-person team with an annual foreign assistance budget of $400 million. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, leading U.S. relations with the 83-member Coalition and efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS in the Middle East and around the world.
While at the State Department, Ambassador Sales led the elements of the U.S. government’s China strategy promoting democratic values and human rights, including with respect to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He oversaw the development and implementation of a wide range of U.S. government sanctions, including Global Magnitsky actions and Executive Order 13,936, targeting those responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. Ambassador Sales was the architect of the landmark 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 on terrorist travel, and successfully pressed NATO to make counterterrorism a core Alliance mission. He led diplomatic engagements to persuade a dozen key partners in Europe and the Americas to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization in its entirety. He launched the Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial, in which heads of state and minister-level officials meet bianually to coordinate efforts against terrorist threats in the region. He led the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat white supremacist terrorism. Under his leadership, the State Department imposed terrorism sanctions on the Russian Imperial Movement – the first-ever U.S. designation of white supremacist terrorists.
Before joining the State Department, Ambassador Sales was Of Counsel at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP (formerly Bancroft PLLC). He was also a tenured law professor, teaching and writing in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and national security law. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Ambassador Sales previously was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He led DHS’s efforts to draft and implement legislation that strengthened the security of and expanded the Visa Waiver Program (which allows citizens of certain countries to travel to the United States without a visa). He headed the U.S. delegation in talks with seven countries to implement the new security measures and was the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Special Envoy to South Korea.
Ambassador Sales also served at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on regulatory initiatives, counterterrorism, and judicial confirmations. In 2005, he managed DOJ’s “war room” for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the Justice Department’s highest honor – for his role in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on judicial confirmations.
In addition to his work at Fillmore Global Strategies, Ambassador Sales is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior advisor at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. He serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the Counter-Extremism Project (a nonprofit and nonpartisan international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies), the Secure Community Network (the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community), and the Sue J. Henry Center for Pre-Law Education at Miami University.
An Ohio native, Ambassador Sales received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke Law School, where he was Research Editor of the Duke Law Journal and joined the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Vince Vitkowsky chaired the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law and Policy Practice Group for over a decade. He is also a Fellow at the National Security Institute of George Mason University Law School. Vince spent 45 years in private practice, primarily in AmLaw 100/200 firms and their spin-offs. His practice included domestic and international commercial arbitration and litigation, as well as cyber risks and liabilities. Vince's current focus is on national security policy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism. He has often written and spoken on national security and other public policy issues. Among other affiliations, Vince has been an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Law and Counterterrorism of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association, and Co-Chair of the Committee on Interventions and Trial Observations of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University and his J.D. from Cornell Law School.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
Deputy Secretary of Transportation, US Department of Transportation
Steven G. Bradbury was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation on March 13, 2025, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on March 11, 2025. In this role, he oversees the Department’s operating administrations and spearheads initiatives to ensure a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system that strengthens economic productivity and global competitiveness. Deputy Secretary Bradbury also assists Secretary Duffy in managing the Department’s activities, including its workforce of over 58,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $109 billion.
Bradbury previously served as the 23rd General Counsel of the Department of Transportation from 2017 to 2021, as the Acting Deputy Secretary from 2019, and as Acting Secretary of Transportation in 2021. As General Counsel, he was the chief legal officer, advising on all legal matters and ensuring the integrity and compliance of the Department’s policies and programs.
Before rejoining DOT, Bradbury was a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation from December 2022 to March 2025. He has extensive experience in the public and private sector, having served as Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge James L. Buckley.
Bradbury holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.
Nonresident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Jim Harper is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on privacy issues, and select legal and constitutional law issues.
A lawyer by training, Mr. Harper has served as counsel for the Subcommittee on Commercial, and Administrative Law of the US House Committee on the Judiciary and as counsel for the Senate Committee on Government Affairs. More recently, he worked at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, where he wrote on the intersection of business, technology, and public policy, including privacy, surveillance, data security, telecommunications, and cryptocurrencies. He also served as global policy counsel for the Bitcoin Foundation. Mr. Harper was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Early in his post-Hill career, he represented companies such as PayPal and Verisign before Congress.
Mr. Harper is the co-editor of “Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It” (Cato Institute, 2010) and the author of “Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood” (Cato Institute, 2006). He has written several amicus briefs in Fourth Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and has published scholarly articles in a variety of law journals. In the popular press, Mr. Harper has been published in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.
Mr. Harper has a law degree from the U.C. Hastings College of the Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, and a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Kate Martin is a Senior Fellow at American Progress where she works on issues at the intersection of national security, civil liberties, and human rights. The New York Times’ Taking Note blog described her as “an expert on surveillance and detention, and a leading advocate for the rule of law in the so-called ‘war on terror.’” Before coming to American Progress, Ms. Martin served as director of the Center for National Security Studies for more than 20 years. She frequently testifies before Congress on national security and civil liberties issues. She is also a frequent commentator in the national media and has written extensively on these issues for the past 25 years. At the Center for National Security Studies, Martin brought lawsuits that challenged government deprivations of civil liberties. She has taught national security law and served as general counsel to the National Security Archive.
Ms. Martin is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and Pomona College. Before joining the public interest world, she served as a partner at the law firm of Nussbaum, Owen & Webster.
Founder and Principal, Fillmore Global Strategies LLC
Ambassador Nathan A. Sales is the founder and principal of Fillmore Global Strategies LLC, a consultancy that provides legal and strategic advisory services on matters at the intersection of law, policy, and diplomacy.
From 2017 to 2021, Ambassador Sales served at the U.S. Department of State as Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting). He oversaw nine bureaus and offices led by Senate-confirmed principals, with 1,300 employees and a combined foreign assistance budget of more than $5 billion annually, and the mission of preventing and countering threats to civilian security, including terrorism, mass atrocities, and violations of human rights and the rule of law.
Concurrently, Ambassador Sales was Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism. After being nominated by the President and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he was sworn in on August 10, 2017. He served as the principal adviser to the Secretary of State on international counterterrorism matters, and led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, a 200-person team with an annual foreign assistance budget of $400 million. He was also the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, leading U.S. relations with the 83-member Coalition and efforts to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS in the Middle East and around the world.
While at the State Department, Ambassador Sales led the elements of the U.S. government’s China strategy promoting democratic values and human rights, including with respect to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He oversaw the development and implementation of a wide range of U.S. government sanctions, including Global Magnitsky actions and Executive Order 13,936, targeting those responsible for undermining Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. Ambassador Sales was the architect of the landmark 2017 UN Security Council Resolution 2396 on terrorist travel, and successfully pressed NATO to make counterterrorism a core Alliance mission. He led diplomatic engagements to persuade a dozen key partners in Europe and the Americas to designate Hizballah as a terrorist organization in its entirety. He launched the Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial, in which heads of state and minister-level officials meet bianually to coordinate efforts against terrorist threats in the region. He led the U.S. government’s international efforts to combat white supremacist terrorism. Under his leadership, the State Department imposed terrorism sanctions on the Russian Imperial Movement – the first-ever U.S. designation of white supremacist terrorists.
Before joining the State Department, Ambassador Sales was Of Counsel at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP (formerly Bancroft PLLC). He was also a tenured law professor, teaching and writing in the fields of administrative law, constitutional law, and national security law. His scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times.
Ambassador Sales previously was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He led DHS’s efforts to draft and implement legislation that strengthened the security of and expanded the Visa Waiver Program (which allows citizens of certain countries to travel to the United States without a visa). He headed the U.S. delegation in talks with seven countries to implement the new security measures and was the Secretary of Homeland Security’s Special Envoy to South Korea.
Ambassador Sales also served at the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on regulatory initiatives, counterterrorism, and judicial confirmations. In 2005, he managed DOJ’s “war room” for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. He received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service – the Justice Department’s highest honor – for his role in drafting the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award for his work on judicial confirmations.
In addition to his work at Fillmore Global Strategies, Ambassador Sales is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior advisor at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy. He serves on a number of advisory boards, including for the Counter-Extremism Project (a nonprofit and nonpartisan international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies), the Secure Community Network (the official safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community), and the Sue J. Henry Center for Pre-Law Education at Miami University.
An Ohio native, Ambassador Sales received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D., magna cum laude, from Duke Law School, where he was Research Editor of the Duke Law Journal and joined the Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Vince Vitkowsky chaired the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law and Policy Practice Group for over a decade. He is also a Fellow at the National Security Institute of George Mason University Law School. Vince spent 45 years in private practice, primarily in AmLaw 100/200 firms and their spin-offs. His practice included domestic and international commercial arbitration and litigation, as well as cyber risks and liabilities. Vince's current focus is on national security policy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism. He has often written and spoken on national security and other public policy issues. Among other affiliations, Vince has been an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Law and Counterterrorism of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a member of the Executive Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association, and Co-Chair of the Committee on Interventions and Trial Observations of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. He received his B.A. from Northwestern University and his J.D. from Cornell Law School.
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
Benjamin Wittes is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. He co-founded and is the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, which is devoted to sober and serious discussion of "Hard National Security Choices," and is a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. He is the author of Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo, published in November 2011, co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, published in December 2011, and editor of Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy (Brookings Institution Press, May 2012). He is also writing a book on data and technology proliferation and their implications for security. He is the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror, published in June 2008 by The Penguin Press, and the editor of the 2009 Brookings book, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform.
His previous books include Starr: A Reassessment, published in 2002 by Yale University Press, and Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times, published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and the Hoover Institution.
Between 1997 and 2006, he served as an editorial writer for The Washington Post specializing in legal affairs. Before joining the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, Wittes covered the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies as a reporter and news editor at Legal Times. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, Policy Review, and First Things.
Benjamin Wittes was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1990, and he has a black belt in taekwondo.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Times. Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. He holds a J.D. from Stanford University.
Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies, Manhattan Institute
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Previously he was executive director and senior lecturer at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and before that a vice president of the Cato Institute.
Shapiro is the author of Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elites (2025) and Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court (2020), coauthor of Religious Liberties for Corporations? (2014), and editor of 11 volumes of the Cato Supreme Court Review (2008-18). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, National Review, and Newsweek. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, writes the Shapiro’s Gavel newsletter on Substack, and once appeared on the Colbert Report.
Shapiro has testified many times before Congress and state legislatures and has filed more than 500 amicus curiae “friend of the court” briefs in the Supreme Court. He lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, is a member of the board of fellows of the Jewish Policy Center, was an inaugural Washington Fellow at the National Review Institute, and has been an adjunct law professor at the George Washington University and University of Mississippi. He is also the chairman of the board of advisers of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court, and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Earlier in his career, Shapiro was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb. Before entering private practice, he clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He holds an AB from Princeton University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School.
Vice President for Legal Affairs, Cato Institute
Roger Pilon is the Cato’s Institute’s vice president for legal affairs, the founding director of Cato’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, the inaugural holder of Cato’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and the founding publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
Prior to joining Cato, Pilon held five senior posts in the Reagan administration, including at State and Justice, and was a national fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 1989 the Bicentennial Commission presented him with its Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in writing on the U.S. Constitution. In 2001 Columbia University’s School of General Studies awarded him its Alumni Medal of Distinction. Pilon lectures and debates at universities and law schools across the country and testifies often before Congress.
His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Legal Times, National Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Stanford Law and Policy Review, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC’s Nightline, CBS’s 60 Minutes II, Fox News Channel, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and other media.
Pilon holds a BA from Columbia University, an MA and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the George Washington University School of Law.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Judge Smith was appointed U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit by President Reagan and entered on duty in January 1988. He attended public schools in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Yale University, receiving a B.A. in 1969 and a J.D. in 1972.
Judge Smith was a Law Clerk to U.S. District Judge Halbert Woodward, Northern District of Texas, 1972-1973; with the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski as an Associate, 1973-1981, and as Partner, 1981-1984; and as City Attorney, City of Houston, 1984-1988. He was Chairman, Civil Service Commission, City of Houston, 1982-1984; and a Director, Harris County Housing Authority, 1978-1980.
Judge Smith lives in Houston and is married to Mary Jane Smith and has four children: Ruth Ann, Clark, J.J., and Brandon. He formerly was Chair of the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He assists LexisNexis/Matthew Bender & Co. in periodic revisions of several chapters of Moore’s Federal Practice.
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union
Nadine Strossen, New York Law School Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), was national President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. An internationally acclaimed free speech scholar and advocate, who regularly addresses diverse audiences and provides media commentary around the world, Strossen is also the Host and Project Consultant for Free To Speak, a 3-hour documentary film series distributed on public television in 2023. Her books about free speech include: Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2023); HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018); and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (Scribner 1995), which was republished with a new Preface in 2024 as part of the NYU Classics Series. Her many honors and awards include the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech. She serves on the Advisory Boards of several organizations that do free speech work, including: ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin.
Deputy Secretary of Transportation, US Department of Transportation
Steven G. Bradbury was sworn in as the Deputy Secretary of Transportation on March 13, 2025, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on March 11, 2025. In this role, he oversees the Department’s operating administrations and spearheads initiatives to ensure a safe, efficient, and modern transportation system that strengthens economic productivity and global competitiveness. Deputy Secretary Bradbury also assists Secretary Duffy in managing the Department’s activities, including its workforce of over 58,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $109 billion.
Bradbury previously served as the 23rd General Counsel of the Department of Transportation from 2017 to 2021, as the Acting Deputy Secretary from 2019, and as Acting Secretary of Transportation in 2021. As General Counsel, he was the chief legal officer, advising on all legal matters and ensuring the integrity and compliance of the Department’s policies and programs.
Before rejoining DOT, Bradbury was a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation from December 2022 to March 2025. He has extensive experience in the public and private sector, having served as Principal Deputy and Acting Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Dechert LLP. Earlier in his career, he clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge James L. Buckley.
Bradbury holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in English from Stanford University.
Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Dean and Levin Mabie & Levin Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law
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.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Professor of Law and Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Center, University of Florida Levin College of Law
Professor Stinneford teaches and writes about legal ethics, criminal law, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. His work has been cited by the United States Supreme Court, several state supreme courts and federal courts of appeal, and numerous scholars. It has published in numerous scholarly journals including the Georgetown Law Journal, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the William & Mary Law Review. The Stanford-Yale Junior faculty forum selected one of his articles as the best paper in the category of Constitutional History, and the AALS Criminal Justice Section named another article as the best paper in its Junior Scholars Paper Competition. In the fall of 2015, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Georgetown Law Center, Center for the Constitution.
Before joining the Florida faculty in 2009, Stinneford clerked for the Hon. James Moran of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, served as an Assistant United States Attorney, and practiced law with Winston & Strawn in Chicago. Stinneford teaches first-year courses in Criminal Law and Constitutional Law, and upper-level courses in Professional Responsibility, Criminal Procedure, Federal Criminal Law, Law & Literature, and White Collar Crime.
Executive Vice President and General Counsel, National Football League
Ted Ullyot serves as Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the National Football League and is the founder of Highway 50 Ventures, LLC, an investment and advisory firm. A lawyer by background, Ullyot was General Counsel of Facebook from 2008 to 2013. He served in the administration of President George W. Bush, including in the White House as an Associate Counsel and as Deputy Staff Secretary, and in the Justice Department as Chief of Staff to Attorney General Gonzales.
Ullyot began his career as a law clerk, first for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He was a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
At other points in his career, Ullyot served as General Counsel of ESL Investments, Inc.; as General Counsel of AOL Time Warner Europe; as a board member at AutoZone Inc.; and as a partner in the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
He is a member of the board of visitors of the Federalist Society; a member of the University of Chicago Law School Council; and a board member of the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society.
Ullyot graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, after doing his undergraduate work at Harvard. He and his family live in Northern California.
Devon Westhill is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nomination of Westhill on October 7, 2025.
Westhill returns to the USDA where he previously headed the civil rights office as Deputy Assistant Secretary in President Trump’s first term. His previous government appointments also include service at the U.S. Department of Labor, liaison to the Administrative Conference of the U.S., and liaison to the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Prior to returning to government service, Westhill was President and General Counsel of a nonprofit civil rights organization.
Westhill has testified on civil rights matters before Congress, federal agencies, and as an expert witness in federal court. He has spoken hundreds of times at college campuses, conferences, and on radio and TV programs, and he is frequently quoted in print publications, and his writing has appeared in numerous national outlets. A U.S. Navy veteran, Westhill earned his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his JD from the University of Florida.
Debate I: Should We Better Protect Government Secrets and Punish Leaks More Severely?
Roger Pilon, Jerry E. Smith, Nadine Strossen
Recent leaks of classified information have undermined the public’s confidence in the ability of their...
Roundtable Discussion: Balancing Privacy and Security
Steven Gill Bradbury, Rachel L. Brand, Robert H. Jerry, William H. Pryor, Julian Sanchez, John F. Stinneford, Theodore W. Ullyot, Devon Westhill
This roundtable will address a wide range of issues and potential solutions to the challenges...
Roundtable Discussion: Balancing Privacy and Security
Steven Gill Bradbury, Rachel L. Brand, Robert H. Jerry, William H. Pryor, Julian Sanchez, John F. Stinneford, Theodore W. Ullyot, Devon Westhill
This roundtable will address a wide range of issues and potential solutions to the challenges...
The Debt Crisis
Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores: Making Martyrs Out Of Corporate Owners
Denver, ColoradoHow Money Walks
Debate I: Should We Better Protect Government Secrets and Punish Leaks More Severely?
2014 National Student Symposium
Gainesville, FLRoundtable Discussion: Balancing Privacy and Security
2014 National Student Symposium
Gainesville, FLPanel II: The NSA Telephone Metadata Program
Steven Gill Bradbury, Jim Harper, Kate Martin, Nathan A. Sales, Vincent Vitkowsky, Benjamin Wittes
In the 12 years since 9/11, as the national security threat matrix has become increasingly...
Panel II: The NSA Telephone Metadata Program
Steven Gill Bradbury, Jim Harper, Kate Martin, Nathan A. Sales, Vincent Vitkowsky, Benjamin Wittes
In the 12 years since 9/11, as the national security threat matrix has become increasingly...