President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer, Merkle Science
Mary Beth Buchanan is currently President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer at Merkle Science. She was former General Counsel for Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange. She was a partner at Bryan Cave LLP in the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations and Securities Litigation and Enforcement Client Service Groups. She concentrated her practice on white collar criminal defense, SEC and FINRA enforcement matters, corporate and accounting fraud, internal investigations, corporate compliance, foreign corrupt practices violations, Congressional investigations and complex civil litigation.
Ms. Buchanan served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania from September 2001 to November 2009, having been appointed by President George W. Bush. She is the only woman in Pennsylvania's history to be presidentially appointed to this position. As the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan oversaw the prosecution of more than 5,000 cases, including corporate and securities fraud, bank fraud, foreign corrupt practices, false claims, money laundering, health care fraud, public corruption and a broad range of violent crimes. Prior to that time, Ms. Buchanan spent more than 13 years as an Assistant United States Attorney litigating criminal, civil and appellate cases.
During her tenure as the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan also held several posts at the DOJ, including serving as the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, acting director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women and chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Ms. Buchanan also served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Organizational Guidelines Advisory Committee, which made recommendations to the Commission for amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for Business Organizations.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday.
A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009 for “American Exception,” a series of articles examining ways in which the American legal system differs from those of other developed nations. He received the 2010 Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Roberts Court.
He is the author of “To Have and Uphold: The Supreme Court and the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Business Week and Rolling Stone, and he has published articles in The Arizona Law Review, The Michigan Law Review and The New York University Annual Survey of American Law.
Liptak has taught courses at Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer, Merkle Science
Mary Beth Buchanan is currently President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer at Merkle Science. She was former General Counsel for Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange. She was a partner at Bryan Cave LLP in the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations and Securities Litigation and Enforcement Client Service Groups. She concentrated her practice on white collar criminal defense, SEC and FINRA enforcement matters, corporate and accounting fraud, internal investigations, corporate compliance, foreign corrupt practices violations, Congressional investigations and complex civil litigation.
Ms. Buchanan served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania from September 2001 to November 2009, having been appointed by President George W. Bush. She is the only woman in Pennsylvania's history to be presidentially appointed to this position. As the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan oversaw the prosecution of more than 5,000 cases, including corporate and securities fraud, bank fraud, foreign corrupt practices, false claims, money laundering, health care fraud, public corruption and a broad range of violent crimes. Prior to that time, Ms. Buchanan spent more than 13 years as an Assistant United States Attorney litigating criminal, civil and appellate cases.
During her tenure as the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan also held several posts at the DOJ, including serving as the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, acting director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women and chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Ms. Buchanan also served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Organizational Guidelines Advisory Committee, which made recommendations to the Commission for amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for Business Organizations.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday.
A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009 for “American Exception,” a series of articles examining ways in which the American legal system differs from those of other developed nations. He received the 2010 Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Roberts Court.
He is the author of “To Have and Uphold: The Supreme Court and the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Business Week and Rolling Stone, and he has published articles in The Arizona Law Review, The Michigan Law Review and The New York University Annual Survey of American Law.
Liptak has taught courses at Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice
As head of the Criminal Division, Mr. Breuer oversees nearly 600 attorneys who prosecute federal criminal cases across the country and help develop the criminal law. He also works closely with the nation’s 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in connection with the investigation and prosecution of criminal matters in their districts. Mr. Breuer is a national leader on a range of federal law enforcement priorities, including financial fraud, health care fraud, public corruption, and violence along the Southwest Border. He has also been a leading voice on policy issues related to criminal law enforcement, including the scope of prosecutors’ discovery obligations in federal criminal cases and sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses. Mr. Breuer regularly testifies before Congress on the Administration’s policy initiatives and advises the Attorney General and the White House on matters of criminal law. Mr. Breuer also serves as the Department's representative on the Atrocities Prevention Board, which President Obama announced in April 2012. For his work as Assistant Attorney General, the National Law Journal named Mr. Breuer a "Visionary" in the Washington, D.C. legal community, and he was recently ranked sixth on Ethisphere’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics.
Mr. Breuer began his legal career in 1985 as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, where he prosecuted violent crime, such as armed robbery and gang violence, white collar crime, and other offenses. In 1989, he joined the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, where he worked until 1997, when he joined the White House Counsel’s Office as Special Counsel to President William Jefferson Clinton. As Special Counsel, Mr. Breuer assisted in defending President Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial.
Mr. Breuer returned to Covington in 1999 as co-chair of the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group, where he specialized in white collar criminal defense and complex civil litigation and represented individuals and corporations in matters involving high-stakes legal risks. He also vice-chaired the firm’s Public Service Committee. At Covington, Mr. Breuer developed a reputation as one of the top defense lawyers in the country. He has been recognized as a leading litigator by numerous publications, including American Lawyer ("45 Under 45"), Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America, Guide to the World’s Leading White Collar Crime Lawyers, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, and Washingtonian ("Big Guns"). He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a Barrister of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, and a member of the American Law Institute.
Mr. Breuer received his B.A. from Columbia College in 1980 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1985.
Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
A partner in the Litigation Department, Mark Mendelsohn is Chair of the FCPA Group, and a member of the White Collar Crime and Regulatory Defense, Internal Investigations, and Securities Litigation Practice Groups. Prior to joining Paul, Weiss, Mark served as the deputy chief of the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and is internationally acknowledged and respected as the architect and key enforcement official of DOJ’s modern Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement program.
As deputy chief of the Fraud Section from 2005 to 2010, Mark was responsible for overseeing all DOJ investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA, and for supervising a team of trial attorneys with respect to investigations and prosecutions of a wide variety of federal white collar crimes including money laundering, mail and wire fraud, procurement fraud, Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) violations, and violations of economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations, including with respect to the United Nations Oil for Food Program. During his tenure, Mark handled hundreds of voluntary disclosures of illicit corporate payments, worked closely with attorneys in the Division of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, helped establish and worked closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's FCPA squad at the Washington Field Office, negotiated numerous corporate plea, deferred and non-prosecution agreements on behalf of DOJ, and participated in the appointment of, interaction with, and reporting by more than 16 corporate compliance monitors. Mark led an effort to forge closer working relationships with foreign regulators in connection with transnational bribery cases, resulting in coordinated settlements with the Munich Public Prosecutor in Germany in the Siemens prosecutions and coordinated settlements with the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office in the BAE and Innospec prosecutions, among others. Mark was also responsible for administering DOJ's FCPA Opinion Release Procedure, including issuing the seminal opinion on FCPA transactional diligence and successor liability (Op. Rel. 08-02).
In addition to case-related responsibilities, Mark had significant policy responsibilities, including principal policy responsibilities related to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-bribery Convention. As a member of the U.S. delegation to the OECD Bribery Working Group, Mark served as a lead examiner for the follow-up review of Japan's implementation of the OECD Anti-bribery Convention, played a key role in peer review of the United Kingdom including consultation regarding its Bribery Act of 2010, negotiated the 2009 Anti-Bribery Recommendation, and played a leading role in the drafting and adoption of the OECD's "Good Practice Guidance on Internal Controls, Ethics and Compliance."
During his tenure administering the DOJ's FCPA enforcement program, the DOJ brought more than 50 prosecutions against corporations for violations of the FCPA and related offenses, resulting in more than $1.5 billion in criminal penalties. During that same period, DOJ brought approximately 80 prosecutions against individuals. Among the notable prosecutions were the following: U.S. v. Siemens AG, et al.; U.S. v. Kellogg Brown & Root, LLC and U.S. v. Albert "Jack" Stanley; U.S. v. Congressman William J. Jefferson; U.S. v.BAE Systems plc; U.S. v. Baker Hughes, et al.; U.S. v. Titan Corp.; U.S. v. Statoil ASA; U.S. v.Monsanto; Lucent Technologies, Inc.; U.S. v. Willbros Group, Inc., et al.; U.S. v. Christian Sapsizian, et al.; U.S. v. Viktor Kozeny and Frederick Bourke, Jr.; U.S. v. Gerald and Patricia Green; U.S. v. Innospec, Inc.; and U.S. v. Daimler AG.
Prior to joining the Fraud Section, Mark was senior counsel in the DOJ's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in Washington, D.C., and prior to that served for nearly six years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. During his service with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mark tried numerous cases to verdict and argued several appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As a federal prosecutor, Mark was a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service for the "Investigation into Corrupt Payments by Siemens AG," and a recipient of the Assistant Attorney General's Award for "The Safeguarding and Maintenance of Confidence in the American Marketplace." Mark has been recognized by Ethisphere Institute in 2011 as a "Top Gun" among "Attorneys Who Matter," in 2009 as a "Government Star" among "Attorneys Who Matter In Corporate Compliance," and in 2007 and 2008 as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics." In 2010 and 2011, Mark was selected as one of the 2010 Lawdragon "500 Leading Lawyers in America." Mark is also ranked by Chambers as an International Trade/FCPA expert.
Mark has spoken frequently as a faculty member, panelist and keynote speaker at numerous FCPA, anti-corruption, corporate compliance, securities fraud, money laundering, and white collar crime programs and conferences. He teaches International Criminal Law as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and has also been an adjunct lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. Mark is member of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court and a member of the Board of Directors of Transparency International-USA.
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
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.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice
As head of the Criminal Division, Mr. Breuer oversees nearly 600 attorneys who prosecute federal criminal cases across the country and help develop the criminal law. He also works closely with the nation’s 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in connection with the investigation and prosecution of criminal matters in their districts. Mr. Breuer is a national leader on a range of federal law enforcement priorities, including financial fraud, health care fraud, public corruption, and violence along the Southwest Border. He has also been a leading voice on policy issues related to criminal law enforcement, including the scope of prosecutors’ discovery obligations in federal criminal cases and sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses. Mr. Breuer regularly testifies before Congress on the Administration’s policy initiatives and advises the Attorney General and the White House on matters of criminal law. Mr. Breuer also serves as the Department's representative on the Atrocities Prevention Board, which President Obama announced in April 2012. For his work as Assistant Attorney General, the National Law Journal named Mr. Breuer a "Visionary" in the Washington, D.C. legal community, and he was recently ranked sixth on Ethisphere’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics.
Mr. Breuer began his legal career in 1985 as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, where he prosecuted violent crime, such as armed robbery and gang violence, white collar crime, and other offenses. In 1989, he joined the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, where he worked until 1997, when he joined the White House Counsel’s Office as Special Counsel to President William Jefferson Clinton. As Special Counsel, Mr. Breuer assisted in defending President Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial.
Mr. Breuer returned to Covington in 1999 as co-chair of the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group, where he specialized in white collar criminal defense and complex civil litigation and represented individuals and corporations in matters involving high-stakes legal risks. He also vice-chaired the firm’s Public Service Committee. At Covington, Mr. Breuer developed a reputation as one of the top defense lawyers in the country. He has been recognized as a leading litigator by numerous publications, including American Lawyer ("45 Under 45"), Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America, Guide to the World’s Leading White Collar Crime Lawyers, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, and Washingtonian ("Big Guns"). He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a Barrister of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, and a member of the American Law Institute.
Mr. Breuer received his B.A. from Columbia College in 1980 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1985.
Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
A partner in the Litigation Department, Mark Mendelsohn is Chair of the FCPA Group, and a member of the White Collar Crime and Regulatory Defense, Internal Investigations, and Securities Litigation Practice Groups. Prior to joining Paul, Weiss, Mark served as the deputy chief of the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and is internationally acknowledged and respected as the architect and key enforcement official of DOJ’s modern Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement program.
As deputy chief of the Fraud Section from 2005 to 2010, Mark was responsible for overseeing all DOJ investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA, and for supervising a team of trial attorneys with respect to investigations and prosecutions of a wide variety of federal white collar crimes including money laundering, mail and wire fraud, procurement fraud, Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) violations, and violations of economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations, including with respect to the United Nations Oil for Food Program. During his tenure, Mark handled hundreds of voluntary disclosures of illicit corporate payments, worked closely with attorneys in the Division of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, helped establish and worked closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's FCPA squad at the Washington Field Office, negotiated numerous corporate plea, deferred and non-prosecution agreements on behalf of DOJ, and participated in the appointment of, interaction with, and reporting by more than 16 corporate compliance monitors. Mark led an effort to forge closer working relationships with foreign regulators in connection with transnational bribery cases, resulting in coordinated settlements with the Munich Public Prosecutor in Germany in the Siemens prosecutions and coordinated settlements with the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office in the BAE and Innospec prosecutions, among others. Mark was also responsible for administering DOJ's FCPA Opinion Release Procedure, including issuing the seminal opinion on FCPA transactional diligence and successor liability (Op. Rel. 08-02).
In addition to case-related responsibilities, Mark had significant policy responsibilities, including principal policy responsibilities related to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-bribery Convention. As a member of the U.S. delegation to the OECD Bribery Working Group, Mark served as a lead examiner for the follow-up review of Japan's implementation of the OECD Anti-bribery Convention, played a key role in peer review of the United Kingdom including consultation regarding its Bribery Act of 2010, negotiated the 2009 Anti-Bribery Recommendation, and played a leading role in the drafting and adoption of the OECD's "Good Practice Guidance on Internal Controls, Ethics and Compliance."
During his tenure administering the DOJ's FCPA enforcement program, the DOJ brought more than 50 prosecutions against corporations for violations of the FCPA and related offenses, resulting in more than $1.5 billion in criminal penalties. During that same period, DOJ brought approximately 80 prosecutions against individuals. Among the notable prosecutions were the following: U.S. v. Siemens AG, et al.; U.S. v. Kellogg Brown & Root, LLC and U.S. v. Albert "Jack" Stanley; U.S. v. Congressman William J. Jefferson; U.S. v.BAE Systems plc; U.S. v. Baker Hughes, et al.; U.S. v. Titan Corp.; U.S. v. Statoil ASA; U.S. v.Monsanto; Lucent Technologies, Inc.; U.S. v. Willbros Group, Inc., et al.; U.S. v. Christian Sapsizian, et al.; U.S. v. Viktor Kozeny and Frederick Bourke, Jr.; U.S. v. Gerald and Patricia Green; U.S. v. Innospec, Inc.; and U.S. v. Daimler AG.
Prior to joining the Fraud Section, Mark was senior counsel in the DOJ's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in Washington, D.C., and prior to that served for nearly six years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. During his service with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mark tried numerous cases to verdict and argued several appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As a federal prosecutor, Mark was a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service for the "Investigation into Corrupt Payments by Siemens AG," and a recipient of the Assistant Attorney General's Award for "The Safeguarding and Maintenance of Confidence in the American Marketplace." Mark has been recognized by Ethisphere Institute in 2011 as a "Top Gun" among "Attorneys Who Matter," in 2009 as a "Government Star" among "Attorneys Who Matter In Corporate Compliance," and in 2007 and 2008 as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics." In 2010 and 2011, Mark was selected as one of the 2010 Lawdragon "500 Leading Lawyers in America." Mark is also ranked by Chambers as an International Trade/FCPA expert.
Mark has spoken frequently as a faculty member, panelist and keynote speaker at numerous FCPA, anti-corruption, corporate compliance, securities fraud, money laundering, and white collar crime programs and conferences. He teaches International Criminal Law as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and has also been an adjunct lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. Mark is member of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court and a member of the Board of Directors of Transparency International-USA.
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
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.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
President, North Star Opinion Research
Dr. Whit Ayres is the President of North Star Opinion Research, formerly Ayres, McHenry, & Associates Inc. Prior to establishing the firm, Ayres served as Senior Executive Assistant for Budget and Policy to Governor Carroll Campbell in South Carolina. He also served as a tenured member of the political science faculty at the University of South Carolina.
Ayres is the Co-Founder of Resurgent Republic with former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie. Resurgent Republic develops and disseminates creative conservative messages for the 21st century. The organization conducts periodic surveys and focus groups, and releases the results to the public through its Web site, www.resurgentrepublic.com. He also is the Chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants, (www.theaapc.org), a bi-partisan national organization that promotes the political consulting industry, protects political freedom of speech, and fosters ethical behavior in political campaigns.
Known for his expertise and sharp strategic insight, Ayres is a guest periodically on Fox News, CNN, and National Public Radio. His comments and analysis appear in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and numerous regional newspapers.
He graduated from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, with a major in political science, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ayres is an active private pilot, flying his Beechcraft Baron throughout the eastern U.S., and he is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He is also the Virginia State Racquetball champion in his age division.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Senior Attorney, Sensient Technologies Corporation
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
Executive Director of the Military Law and Policy Institute and AMVETS Legal Clinic
Professor Rotunda is regarded as a leading expert in military law and currently teaches Law of War and a Family Violence Clinic. She is the author of Honor Bound: Inside the Guantanamo Trials, published by Carolina Academic Press (2008). She directed the Clinic for Legal Assistance to Service Members at George Mason School of Law, where she and her students successfully represented military families in various legal disputes, including Physical Evaluation Boards and Traumatic Service Group Life Insurance Appeals. Rotunda has recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars for disabled troops.
Professor Rotunda began her career in the US Army JAG Corps and has since been recruited by the National Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP) to produce a series of instructional DVDs about military law. She has also authored a coordinating outline and co-authored NVLSP's forthcoming book regarding military administrative/disability proceedings, to be published by Lexis Nexis. She remains in the Army Reserves and holds the rank of Major. Rotunda has served in several missions related to the Global War on Terror: she served in Guantanamo Bay, was the legal advisor to a team of investigators pursuing leads in the war on terror, served as a prosecutor at the Office of Military Commissions, represented wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and was the lawyer assigned to Jessica Lynch after Lynch's rescue.
Professor Rotunda is an avid writer and advocate for soldiers. She has written op-eds for The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Times. She is a regular television and radio commentator regarding military law and the ongoing trials in Guantanamo Bay. She has appeared on more than 20 nationally-syndicated radio shows, including The Michael Reagan Show, The Dennis Miller Show, and the Jim Bohannon Show. Rotunda has also appeared on national and international television news programs, including Hannity's America, the Brit Hume Report, and Al Jazeera.
B.A., University of Wyoming; J.D., University of Wyoming College of Law
Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy, Georgetown Law
David Cole is the Honorable George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy and former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He writes about and teaches constitutional law, freedom of speech, and constitutional criminal procedure. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and is the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation.
David has published widely in law journals and the popular press, including The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He is the author or editor of ten books, several of which have won awards. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review and best book on an issue of national policy in1999 by the American Political Science Association.
David received his bachelor’s degree and law degree from Yale University. He worked as a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights from 1985 to 1990. He has continued to litigate as a professor and, from 2017 to 2024, as National Legal Director of the ACLU. He has litigated many significant constitutional cases at the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson (1989), which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are prohibited forms of sex discrimination under Title VII; Mahanoy Area Sch. Dist. v. B.L. (2021), which protected student online speech from school discipline; and National Rifle Association v. Vullo (2024), which held that government officials violate the First Amendment when they use their regulatory authority to coerce private parties to blacklist a disfavored political group.
David has received two honorary degrees and numerous awards for his work, including the inaugural Norman Dorsen Presidential Prize from the ACLU for lifetime commitment to civil liberties. The late New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called David “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today.” Nat Hentoff called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”
Professor of Practice, Cardozo School of Law
Gabor Rona received his B.A. from Brandeis University, J.D. from Vermont Law School and LL.M from Columbia Law School.
As the former International Legal Director of Human Rights First, he advised Human Rights First programs on questions of international law and coordinates international human rights litigation. He also represented Human Rights First with governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the media and the public on matters of international human rights and international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).
Before Human Rights First, Rona was a Legal Advisor in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. At the ICRC he focused on the application of international humanitarian and human rights law in the context of counter-terrorism policies and practices. He represented the ICRC in intergovernmental, nongovernmental, academic and public forums and his articles on the topic have appeared in the Financial Times, the Fletcher Forum on World Affairs and the Chicago Journal of International Law, among other publications. In addition, he represented the ICRC in connection with the establishment of international and other criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court. He has also taught International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, the University Centre for International Humanitarian Law in Geneva, Switzerland and Columbia Law School in New York.
Senior Fellow, National Review
Bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy is a contributing editor at National Review, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, and a Fox News contributor. He is a former Chief Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York and led the terrorism prosecution against the “Blind Sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other jihadists for conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. During is 20-year career as a prosecutor, he received numerous honors, including the Justice Department’s highest awards. Andy speaks and writes widely on law and national security, radical Islam, politics, and culture. He has testified before Congress as an expert on issues of constitutional law, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement. He is a columnist for The Hill, and his essays and book reviews appear frequently at The New Criterion. His most recent New York Times bestselling book is Ball of Collusion (Encounter Books, 2019), about the Russiagate controversy (an updated version was published in 2020). His other books include Willful Blindness (2008), The Grand Jihad (2010), Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (2012), and Faithless Execution (2014). He has also written several pamphlets in the Broadside series published by Encounter Books, most recently Islam and Free Speech (2015).
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer, Merkle Science
Mary Beth Buchanan is currently President, Americas and Global Chief Legal Officer at Merkle Science. She was former General Counsel for Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange. She was a partner at Bryan Cave LLP in the firm’s White Collar Defense and Investigations and Securities Litigation and Enforcement Client Service Groups. She concentrated her practice on white collar criminal defense, SEC and FINRA enforcement matters, corporate and accounting fraud, internal investigations, corporate compliance, foreign corrupt practices violations, Congressional investigations and complex civil litigation.
Ms. Buchanan served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania from September 2001 to November 2009, having been appointed by President George W. Bush. She is the only woman in Pennsylvania's history to be presidentially appointed to this position. As the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan oversaw the prosecution of more than 5,000 cases, including corporate and securities fraud, bank fraud, foreign corrupt practices, false claims, money laundering, health care fraud, public corruption and a broad range of violent crimes. Prior to that time, Ms. Buchanan spent more than 13 years as an Assistant United States Attorney litigating criminal, civil and appellate cases.
During her tenure as the United States Attorney, Ms. Buchanan also held several posts at the DOJ, including serving as the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, acting director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women and chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Ms. Buchanan also served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission's Organizational Guidelines Advisory Committee, which made recommendations to the Commission for amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for Business Organizations.
Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court for The New York Times. Liptak’s column on legal affairs, “Sidebar,” appears every other Tuesday.
A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Liptak practiced law at a large New York City law firm and in the legal department of The New York Times Company before joining the paper’s news staff in 2002.
Liptak was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2009 for “American Exception,” a series of articles examining ways in which the American legal system differs from those of other developed nations. He received the 2010 Scripps Howard Award for Washington reporting for a five-part series on the Roberts Court.
He is the author of “To Have and Uphold: The Supreme Court and the Battle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Business Week and Rolling Stone, and he has published articles in The Arizona Law Review, The Michigan Law Review and The New York University Annual Survey of American Law.
Liptak has taught courses at Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Southern California and U.C.L.A. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice
As head of the Criminal Division, Mr. Breuer oversees nearly 600 attorneys who prosecute federal criminal cases across the country and help develop the criminal law. He also works closely with the nation’s 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in connection with the investigation and prosecution of criminal matters in their districts. Mr. Breuer is a national leader on a range of federal law enforcement priorities, including financial fraud, health care fraud, public corruption, and violence along the Southwest Border. He has also been a leading voice on policy issues related to criminal law enforcement, including the scope of prosecutors’ discovery obligations in federal criminal cases and sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses. Mr. Breuer regularly testifies before Congress on the Administration’s policy initiatives and advises the Attorney General and the White House on matters of criminal law. Mr. Breuer also serves as the Department's representative on the Atrocities Prevention Board, which President Obama announced in April 2012. For his work as Assistant Attorney General, the National Law Journal named Mr. Breuer a "Visionary" in the Washington, D.C. legal community, and he was recently ranked sixth on Ethisphere’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics.
Mr. Breuer began his legal career in 1985 as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, where he prosecuted violent crime, such as armed robbery and gang violence, white collar crime, and other offenses. In 1989, he joined the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, where he worked until 1997, when he joined the White House Counsel’s Office as Special Counsel to President William Jefferson Clinton. As Special Counsel, Mr. Breuer assisted in defending President Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial.
Mr. Breuer returned to Covington in 1999 as co-chair of the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group, where he specialized in white collar criminal defense and complex civil litigation and represented individuals and corporations in matters involving high-stakes legal risks. He also vice-chaired the firm’s Public Service Committee. At Covington, Mr. Breuer developed a reputation as one of the top defense lawyers in the country. He has been recognized as a leading litigator by numerous publications, including American Lawyer ("45 Under 45"), Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America, Guide to the World’s Leading White Collar Crime Lawyers, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, and Washingtonian ("Big Guns"). He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a Barrister of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, and a member of the American Law Institute.
Mr. Breuer received his B.A. from Columbia College in 1980 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1985.
Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
A partner in the Litigation Department, Mark Mendelsohn is Chair of the FCPA Group, and a member of the White Collar Crime and Regulatory Defense, Internal Investigations, and Securities Litigation Practice Groups. Prior to joining Paul, Weiss, Mark served as the deputy chief of the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and is internationally acknowledged and respected as the architect and key enforcement official of DOJ’s modern Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement program.
As deputy chief of the Fraud Section from 2005 to 2010, Mark was responsible for overseeing all DOJ investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA, and for supervising a team of trial attorneys with respect to investigations and prosecutions of a wide variety of federal white collar crimes including money laundering, mail and wire fraud, procurement fraud, Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) violations, and violations of economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations, including with respect to the United Nations Oil for Food Program. During his tenure, Mark handled hundreds of voluntary disclosures of illicit corporate payments, worked closely with attorneys in the Division of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, helped establish and worked closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's FCPA squad at the Washington Field Office, negotiated numerous corporate plea, deferred and non-prosecution agreements on behalf of DOJ, and participated in the appointment of, interaction with, and reporting by more than 16 corporate compliance monitors. Mark led an effort to forge closer working relationships with foreign regulators in connection with transnational bribery cases, resulting in coordinated settlements with the Munich Public Prosecutor in Germany in the Siemens prosecutions and coordinated settlements with the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office in the BAE and Innospec prosecutions, among others. Mark was also responsible for administering DOJ's FCPA Opinion Release Procedure, including issuing the seminal opinion on FCPA transactional diligence and successor liability (Op. Rel. 08-02).
In addition to case-related responsibilities, Mark had significant policy responsibilities, including principal policy responsibilities related to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-bribery Convention. As a member of the U.S. delegation to the OECD Bribery Working Group, Mark served as a lead examiner for the follow-up review of Japan's implementation of the OECD Anti-bribery Convention, played a key role in peer review of the United Kingdom including consultation regarding its Bribery Act of 2010, negotiated the 2009 Anti-Bribery Recommendation, and played a leading role in the drafting and adoption of the OECD's "Good Practice Guidance on Internal Controls, Ethics and Compliance."
During his tenure administering the DOJ's FCPA enforcement program, the DOJ brought more than 50 prosecutions against corporations for violations of the FCPA and related offenses, resulting in more than $1.5 billion in criminal penalties. During that same period, DOJ brought approximately 80 prosecutions against individuals. Among the notable prosecutions were the following: U.S. v. Siemens AG, et al.; U.S. v. Kellogg Brown & Root, LLC and U.S. v. Albert "Jack" Stanley; U.S. v. Congressman William J. Jefferson; U.S. v.BAE Systems plc; U.S. v. Baker Hughes, et al.; U.S. v. Titan Corp.; U.S. v. Statoil ASA; U.S. v.Monsanto; Lucent Technologies, Inc.; U.S. v. Willbros Group, Inc., et al.; U.S. v. Christian Sapsizian, et al.; U.S. v. Viktor Kozeny and Frederick Bourke, Jr.; U.S. v. Gerald and Patricia Green; U.S. v. Innospec, Inc.; and U.S. v. Daimler AG.
Prior to joining the Fraud Section, Mark was senior counsel in the DOJ's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in Washington, D.C., and prior to that served for nearly six years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. During his service with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mark tried numerous cases to verdict and argued several appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As a federal prosecutor, Mark was a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service for the "Investigation into Corrupt Payments by Siemens AG," and a recipient of the Assistant Attorney General's Award for "The Safeguarding and Maintenance of Confidence in the American Marketplace." Mark has been recognized by Ethisphere Institute in 2011 as a "Top Gun" among "Attorneys Who Matter," in 2009 as a "Government Star" among "Attorneys Who Matter In Corporate Compliance," and in 2007 and 2008 as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics." In 2010 and 2011, Mark was selected as one of the 2010 Lawdragon "500 Leading Lawyers in America." Mark is also ranked by Chambers as an International Trade/FCPA expert.
Mark has spoken frequently as a faculty member, panelist and keynote speaker at numerous FCPA, anti-corruption, corporate compliance, securities fraud, money laundering, and white collar crime programs and conferences. He teaches International Criminal Law as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and has also been an adjunct lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. Mark is member of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court and a member of the Board of Directors of Transparency International-USA.
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
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.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
President, North Star Opinion Research
Dr. Whit Ayres is the President of North Star Opinion Research, formerly Ayres, McHenry, & Associates Inc. Prior to establishing the firm, Ayres served as Senior Executive Assistant for Budget and Policy to Governor Carroll Campbell in South Carolina. He also served as a tenured member of the political science faculty at the University of South Carolina.
Ayres is the Co-Founder of Resurgent Republic with former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie. Resurgent Republic develops and disseminates creative conservative messages for the 21st century. The organization conducts periodic surveys and focus groups, and releases the results to the public through its Web site, www.resurgentrepublic.com. He also is the Chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants, (www.theaapc.org), a bi-partisan national organization that promotes the political consulting industry, protects political freedom of speech, and fosters ethical behavior in political campaigns.
Known for his expertise and sharp strategic insight, Ayres is a guest periodically on Fox News, CNN, and National Public Radio. His comments and analysis appear in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and numerous regional newspapers.
He graduated from Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, with a major in political science, and received an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ayres is an active private pilot, flying his Beechcraft Baron throughout the eastern U.S., and he is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He is also the Virginia State Racquetball champion in his age division.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Criminal Law at the Federal Level
Mary Beth Buchanan, Adam Liptak, John G. Malcolm, George J. Terwilliger
On June 11, 2013, the Federalist Society held its First Annual Executive Branch Review Conference...
Criminal Law at the Federal Level
Mary Beth Buchanan, Adam Liptak, John G. Malcolm, George J. Terwilliger
On June 11, 2013, the Federalist Society held its First Annual Executive Branch Review Conference...
Criminal Law at the Federal Level
First Annual Executive Branch Review Conference
Washington, DCCriminal Law: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Lanny A. Breuer, Mark F. Mendelsohn, Michael B. Mukasey, William H. Pryor, George J. Terwilliger
The Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group hosted this panel on "The Foreign Corrupt Practices...
Criminal Law: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
Lanny A. Breuer, Mark F. Mendelsohn, Michael B. Mukasey, William H. Pryor, George J. Terwilliger
The Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group hosted this panel on "The Foreign Corrupt Practices...
Criminal Law: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCOver-Criminalization and Public Opinion - Podcast
Whit Ayres, George J. Terwilliger, Dean Reuter
Over the last thirty years, the number of federal criminal laws has increased by one-third....
Over-Criminalization and Public Opinion
Can Someone Please Turn on the Lights? Bringing Transparency to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
James C. Dunlop, Michael B. Mukasey
Note from the Editor: This paper assesses the Department of Justice’s authority under the Foreign...
The Civilian Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Kyndra Kaye Rotunda, David D. Cole, Gabor Rona, Andrew McCarthy, George J. Terwilliger
Last updated at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, February 1, 2010 On November 13, 2009, Attorney General Eric...