Deputy Solicitor General, Alabama Office of the Attorney General
Barrett Bowdre serves as deputy solicitor general in the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, where he helps to oversee the state’s appellate docket and defend the state’s interests in state and federal courts throughout the country. He is a former law clerk to Judge Paul J. Kelly, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, then-Chief Judge W. Keith Watkins of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, and then-Chief Judge Ed Carnes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He holds a J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Alabama School of Law and a B.A., cum laude, from Furman University. Before attending law school, he worked as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute, where he researched civic education initiatives and helped compile literary anthologies exploring the American character.
Partner, Resolution Economics
Victoria Lipnic is a Partner at Resolution Economics. She leads the Company’s Human Capital Strategy Group. The Human Capital Strategy Group combines the Company’s expertise in data analytics and deep knowledge of regulatory requirements with an interdisciplinary approach to advise organizations on the full range of their human capital needs and reporting requirements including recruitment, selection, promotions, DE&I, pay equity, and overall talent allocation.
Lipnic joined Resolution Economics in 2021. She has broad experience in the full range of human capital, labor and employment issues, especially from the regulatory enforcement perspective. Prior to joining the Company she served as Commissioner from 2010 to 2020 and Acting Chair from 2017 to 2019 of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was appointed to the EEOC by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. At the EEOC she worked on policy, cases, and regulations under all of the statutes enforced by the Commission including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Equal Pay Act (EPA), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). While at the EEOC she participated in numerous agency regulatory initiatives including the final GINA regulations, the ADA, as amended, regulations, and the revisions to the EEO-1 form to include pay data reporting. She organized the agency’s first public meeting on Big Data in Employment, created its Chief Data Officer position, oversaw development of the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics and published a significant report on age discrimination. She co-chaired the EEOC’s Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, and co-authored its seminal report, issued in 2016, before the #MeToo movement.
Prior to joining the EEOC, she practiced law with Seyfarth Shaw, LLP. She also served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards from 2002 to January 2009, a position she was appointed to by President George W. Bush. At the Department of Labor she oversaw regulatory development and enforcement for the Wage and Hour Division, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the Office of Labor Management Standards and four national workers’ compensation programs. This included oversight and enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, Executive Order 11246 and the Labor Management Reporting Disclosure Act.
Prior to her service as Assistant Secretary, Lipnic served as Workforce Policy Counsel to the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was also in-house counsel for labor and employment with the U.S. Postal Service.
Tammy McCutchen is a leading authority on federal and state wage-hour laws and prevailing wage laws. She counsels businesses on wage-hour compliance, including conducting internal audits on independent contractor status, overtime exemptions, and other pay practices. She also represents employers during investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and serves as an expert witness in wage-hour class actions. She was a founding officer of ComplianceHR, a law and technology company, where she created AI-based applications to evaluate independent contractor and overtime exempt status.
Ms. McCutchen served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2001. She was the primary architect of the 2004 revisions to the overtime exemption regulations, the first major changes to the regulations in 55 years.
Before joining DOL, she was senior counsel for the Hershey Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Ms. McCutchen has been a volunteer leader of the Federalist Society since 1989. She served in leadership roles for the Northwestern Student Chapter and Chicago Lawyers Chapter. She currently serves in leadership for the Labor & Employment Practice Group, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Knoxville, TN Lawyers Chapter. She served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Law360, the Labor Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Legal Advisory Board of the National Federation of Independent Business, and a Policy Fellow at the ACU Foundation.
Ms. McCutchen is a graduate of Western Illinois University and Northwestern University School of Law. She clerked for the Hon. Daniel Manion on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Former Solicitor of Labor, 2021-2025
Seema Nanda served as the U.S. Solicitor of Labor, from 2021 to 2025.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Special Counsel to the President, Alliance Defending Freedom
Ryan Bangert serves as senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at Alliance Defending Freedom. He oversees ADF’s regulatory practice, government relations, and corporate engagement teams. He also advises executive leadership with strategic initiatives and appears as counsel for ADF clients.
Before joining ADF, Bangert served as deputy first assistant attorney general and deputy for legal counsel in the office of the Texas attorney general. In those roles, he oversaw the state’s Special Litigation Unit, which handled critical litigation against the federal government, and oversaw multiple divisions within the office. Prior to that, he served as deputy for civil litigation for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, overseeing the state’s civil litigation divisions, including the consumer protection and antitrust divisions, with over 200 attorneys and staff. During his time in government service, Bangert handled a diverse array of matters involving Big Tech, election law, civil rights, multistate antitrust and consumer protection investigations, and many other issues.
Prior to his government service, Bangert was a litigation partner at Baker Botts L.L.P., where he was a member of the firm’s commercial litigation and appellate practice sections. A seasoned trial attorney, The Texas Lawyer ranked the verdict Bangert achieved in the Janvey v. Maldonado case as the #1 verdict in the securities category for 2015-2019, and The National Law Journal ranked it in its “Top 100 Verdicts of 2015.” He was named a “Texas Rising Star” for multiple years by Texas Lawyer and Law and Politics magazines. While at Baker Botts, he was a volunteer attorney for ADF and served as amicus counsel in numerous cases, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Salazar v. Buono, receiving the firm’s Opus Justitae Award in recognition of his outstanding commitment to pro bono service.
Bangert earned his J.D. from Southern Methodist University, where he was a Hatton Sumner’s scholar and graduated first in his class. He also participated in ADF’s Blackstone program and is a Blackstone Fellow. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bangert is a member of the Philadelphia Society and Federalist Society. He is admitted to practice law in Texas, California (inactive), Missouri (inactive), the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal district and appellate courts. A frequent op-ed contributor, his work has appeared in National Review, Daily Wire, The Hill, Washington Examiner, The Federalist, Fox News, and RealClear Religion. He speaks nationally on constitutional, cultural, and religious liberty issues.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Associate General Counsel, OpenAI
Michael Trinh is currently Associate General Counsel at OpenAI working on litigation and regulatory matters. He was formerly Head of Litigation Advance at Google where he led a team handling a broad portfolio of litigation strategy, research, amici briefs, and proactive/enforcement litigation across the company’s product areas.
In prior roles over 14 years at Google, Mike managed a group defending patent litigation worldwide, and also served as product counsel at Google X for emerging ‘moonshots’ (innovation projects primarily in developing economies). He guided experimental aviation projects as they evolved from research concept towards market introduction, handling the legal/regulatory issues arising from high altitude balloon-mounted telecommunication networks, drone delivery of burritos, kite-generated electricity, and cargo airships. Before this science fiction, he was Litigation Counsel at Google, managing a team handling a fast-growing docket of 100+ patent litigation cases in courts worldwide.
Previously, he was a technology/IP litigation associate at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe in San Francisco. He also handled national security issues while representing, pro bono, Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging their indefinite incarceration without ever being charged. Mike graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center (2005) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2002, B.S. Comp Sci). While he grew up in Raleigh, NC, he now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and a string cheese-seeking dog (who was once featured in the Financial Times).
General Counsel, Saronic Technologies
Tobi Young is the General Counsel of Saronic Technologies. Her responsibilities include managing global legal affairs, regulatory compliance, litigation, risk management, and government security, and corporate governance.
Tobi brings over 20 years of experience with sophisticated legal, regulatory, and compliance issues through leadership roles in all three branches of the federal government and in Fortune 500 companies. Among other governmental positions, she has been an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Office of the White House Counsel; a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch; and a press secretary for Congressman J.C. Watts. Tobi also currently serves as the Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee on the Halliburton Board of Directors (NYSE: HAL).
Tobi grew up in Oklahoma and is a proud member of the Chickasaw Nation. She recently became the youngest inductee into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. Tobi now lives in Austin with her husband Evan, a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court, and their daughter Romilly.
Senior Counsel, Litigation, Defense of Freedom Institute
Don Daugherty is Senior Counsel, Litigation, at the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies. He previously served as a Senior Counsel at the Institute for Free Speech and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Before that, he was a partner at three of Wisconsin’s largest firms, with nearly 30 years of trial and appellate litigation experience. He has been consistently recognized as among the “Best Lawyers in America,” as well as Wisconsin’s “Super Lawyers.” He received his B.A. from the University of Virginia and his J.D. from Northwestern University Law School. After law school, he served as a clerk to the Honorable Roger J. Miner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Don is on the Board of Advisors for the Milwaukee Lawyers’ Chapter of the Federalist Society, and on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s Litigation Practice Group.
Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Special Counsel to the President, Alliance Defending Freedom
Ryan Bangert serves as senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at Alliance Defending Freedom. He oversees ADF’s regulatory practice, government relations, and corporate engagement teams. He also advises executive leadership with strategic initiatives and appears as counsel for ADF clients.
Before joining ADF, Bangert served as deputy first assistant attorney general and deputy for legal counsel in the office of the Texas attorney general. In those roles, he oversaw the state’s Special Litigation Unit, which handled critical litigation against the federal government, and oversaw multiple divisions within the office. Prior to that, he served as deputy for civil litigation for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, overseeing the state’s civil litigation divisions, including the consumer protection and antitrust divisions, with over 200 attorneys and staff. During his time in government service, Bangert handled a diverse array of matters involving Big Tech, election law, civil rights, multistate antitrust and consumer protection investigations, and many other issues.
Prior to his government service, Bangert was a litigation partner at Baker Botts L.L.P., where he was a member of the firm’s commercial litigation and appellate practice sections. A seasoned trial attorney, The Texas Lawyer ranked the verdict Bangert achieved in the Janvey v. Maldonado case as the #1 verdict in the securities category for 2015-2019, and The National Law Journal ranked it in its “Top 100 Verdicts of 2015.” He was named a “Texas Rising Star” for multiple years by Texas Lawyer and Law and Politics magazines. While at Baker Botts, he was a volunteer attorney for ADF and served as amicus counsel in numerous cases, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Salazar v. Buono, receiving the firm’s Opus Justitae Award in recognition of his outstanding commitment to pro bono service.
Bangert earned his J.D. from Southern Methodist University, where he was a Hatton Sumner’s scholar and graduated first in his class. He also participated in ADF’s Blackstone program and is a Blackstone Fellow. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bangert is a member of the Philadelphia Society and Federalist Society. He is admitted to practice law in Texas, California (inactive), Missouri (inactive), the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal district and appellate courts. A frequent op-ed contributor, his work has appeared in National Review, Daily Wire, The Hill, Washington Examiner, The Federalist, Fox News, and RealClear Religion. He speaks nationally on constitutional, cultural, and religious liberty issues.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
President, Notre Dame Student Chapter
Associate General Counsel, OpenAI
Michael Trinh is currently Associate General Counsel at OpenAI working on litigation and regulatory matters. He was formerly Head of Litigation Advance at Google where he led a team handling a broad portfolio of litigation strategy, research, amici briefs, and proactive/enforcement litigation across the company’s product areas.
In prior roles over 14 years at Google, Mike managed a group defending patent litigation worldwide, and also served as product counsel at Google X for emerging ‘moonshots’ (innovation projects primarily in developing economies). He guided experimental aviation projects as they evolved from research concept towards market introduction, handling the legal/regulatory issues arising from high altitude balloon-mounted telecommunication networks, drone delivery of burritos, kite-generated electricity, and cargo airships. Before this science fiction, he was Litigation Counsel at Google, managing a team handling a fast-growing docket of 100+ patent litigation cases in courts worldwide.
Previously, he was a technology/IP litigation associate at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe in San Francisco. He also handled national security issues while representing, pro bono, Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging their indefinite incarceration without ever being charged. Mike graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center (2005) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2002, B.S. Comp Sci). While he grew up in Raleigh, NC, he now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and a string cheese-seeking dog (who was once featured in the Financial Times).
General Counsel, Saronic Technologies
Tobi Young is the General Counsel of Saronic Technologies. Her responsibilities include managing global legal affairs, regulatory compliance, litigation, risk management, and government security, and corporate governance.
Tobi brings over 20 years of experience with sophisticated legal, regulatory, and compliance issues through leadership roles in all three branches of the federal government and in Fortune 500 companies. Among other governmental positions, she has been an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Office of the White House Counsel; a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch; and a press secretary for Congressman J.C. Watts. Tobi also currently serves as the Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee on the Halliburton Board of Directors (NYSE: HAL).
Tobi grew up in Oklahoma and is a proud member of the Chickasaw Nation. She recently became the youngest inductee into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. Tobi now lives in Austin with her husband Evan, a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court, and their daughter Romilly.
Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Special Counsel to the President, Alliance Defending Freedom
Ryan Bangert serves as senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at Alliance Defending Freedom. He oversees ADF’s regulatory practice, government relations, and corporate engagement teams. He also advises executive leadership with strategic initiatives and appears as counsel for ADF clients.
Before joining ADF, Bangert served as deputy first assistant attorney general and deputy for legal counsel in the office of the Texas attorney general. In those roles, he oversaw the state’s Special Litigation Unit, which handled critical litigation against the federal government, and oversaw multiple divisions within the office. Prior to that, he served as deputy for civil litigation for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, overseeing the state’s civil litigation divisions, including the consumer protection and antitrust divisions, with over 200 attorneys and staff. During his time in government service, Bangert handled a diverse array of matters involving Big Tech, election law, civil rights, multistate antitrust and consumer protection investigations, and many other issues.
Prior to his government service, Bangert was a litigation partner at Baker Botts L.L.P., where he was a member of the firm’s commercial litigation and appellate practice sections. A seasoned trial attorney, The Texas Lawyer ranked the verdict Bangert achieved in the Janvey v. Maldonado case as the #1 verdict in the securities category for 2015-2019, and The National Law Journal ranked it in its “Top 100 Verdicts of 2015.” He was named a “Texas Rising Star” for multiple years by Texas Lawyer and Law and Politics magazines. While at Baker Botts, he was a volunteer attorney for ADF and served as amicus counsel in numerous cases, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Salazar v. Buono, receiving the firm’s Opus Justitae Award in recognition of his outstanding commitment to pro bono service.
Bangert earned his J.D. from Southern Methodist University, where he was a Hatton Sumner’s scholar and graduated first in his class. He also participated in ADF’s Blackstone program and is a Blackstone Fellow. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bangert is a member of the Philadelphia Society and Federalist Society. He is admitted to practice law in Texas, California (inactive), Missouri (inactive), the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal district and appellate courts. A frequent op-ed contributor, his work has appeared in National Review, Daily Wire, The Hill, Washington Examiner, The Federalist, Fox News, and RealClear Religion. He speaks nationally on constitutional, cultural, and religious liberty issues.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
President, Notre Dame Student Chapter
Associate General Counsel, OpenAI
Michael Trinh is currently Associate General Counsel at OpenAI working on litigation and regulatory matters. He was formerly Head of Litigation Advance at Google where he led a team handling a broad portfolio of litigation strategy, research, amici briefs, and proactive/enforcement litigation across the company’s product areas.
In prior roles over 14 years at Google, Mike managed a group defending patent litigation worldwide, and also served as product counsel at Google X for emerging ‘moonshots’ (innovation projects primarily in developing economies). He guided experimental aviation projects as they evolved from research concept towards market introduction, handling the legal/regulatory issues arising from high altitude balloon-mounted telecommunication networks, drone delivery of burritos, kite-generated electricity, and cargo airships. Before this science fiction, he was Litigation Counsel at Google, managing a team handling a fast-growing docket of 100+ patent litigation cases in courts worldwide.
Previously, he was a technology/IP litigation associate at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe in San Francisco. He also handled national security issues while representing, pro bono, Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging their indefinite incarceration without ever being charged. Mike graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center (2005) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2002, B.S. Comp Sci). While he grew up in Raleigh, NC, he now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and a string cheese-seeking dog (who was once featured in the Financial Times).
General Counsel, Saronic Technologies
Tobi Young is the General Counsel of Saronic Technologies. Her responsibilities include managing global legal affairs, regulatory compliance, litigation, risk management, and government security, and corporate governance.
Tobi brings over 20 years of experience with sophisticated legal, regulatory, and compliance issues through leadership roles in all three branches of the federal government and in Fortune 500 companies. Among other governmental positions, she has been an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Office of the White House Counsel; a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch; and a press secretary for Congressman J.C. Watts. Tobi also currently serves as the Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee on the Halliburton Board of Directors (NYSE: HAL).
Tobi grew up in Oklahoma and is a proud member of the Chickasaw Nation. She recently became the youngest inductee into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. Tobi now lives in Austin with her husband Evan, a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court, and their daughter Romilly.
Partner, Resolution Economics
Victoria Lipnic is a Partner at Resolution Economics. She leads the Company’s Human Capital Strategy Group. The Human Capital Strategy Group combines the Company’s expertise in data analytics and deep knowledge of regulatory requirements with an interdisciplinary approach to advise organizations on the full range of their human capital needs and reporting requirements including recruitment, selection, promotions, DE&I, pay equity, and overall talent allocation.
Lipnic joined Resolution Economics in 2021. She has broad experience in the full range of human capital, labor and employment issues, especially from the regulatory enforcement perspective. Prior to joining the Company she served as Commissioner from 2010 to 2020 and Acting Chair from 2017 to 2019 of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She was appointed to the EEOC by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. At the EEOC she worked on policy, cases, and regulations under all of the statutes enforced by the Commission including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Equal Pay Act (EPA), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). While at the EEOC she participated in numerous agency regulatory initiatives including the final GINA regulations, the ADA, as amended, regulations, and the revisions to the EEO-1 form to include pay data reporting. She organized the agency’s first public meeting on Big Data in Employment, created its Chief Data Officer position, oversaw development of the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics and published a significant report on age discrimination. She co-chaired the EEOC’s Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, and co-authored its seminal report, issued in 2016, before the #MeToo movement.
Prior to joining the EEOC, she practiced law with Seyfarth Shaw, LLP. She also served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards from 2002 to January 2009, a position she was appointed to by President George W. Bush. At the Department of Labor she oversaw regulatory development and enforcement for the Wage and Hour Division, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the Office of Labor Management Standards and four national workers’ compensation programs. This included oversight and enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, Executive Order 11246 and the Labor Management Reporting Disclosure Act.
Prior to her service as Assistant Secretary, Lipnic served as Workforce Policy Counsel to the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives. She was also in-house counsel for labor and employment with the U.S. Postal Service.
Tammy McCutchen is a leading authority on federal and state wage-hour laws and prevailing wage laws. She counsels businesses on wage-hour compliance, including conducting internal audits on independent contractor status, overtime exemptions, and other pay practices. She also represents employers during investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and serves as an expert witness in wage-hour class actions. She was a founding officer of ComplianceHR, a law and technology company, where she created AI-based applications to evaluate independent contractor and overtime exempt status.
Ms. McCutchen served as Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, appointed by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in 2001. She was the primary architect of the 2004 revisions to the overtime exemption regulations, the first major changes to the regulations in 55 years.
Before joining DOL, she was senior counsel for the Hershey Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Ms. McCutchen has been a volunteer leader of the Federalist Society since 1989. She served in leadership roles for the Northwestern Student Chapter and Chicago Lawyers Chapter. She currently serves in leadership for the Labor & Employment Practice Group, the Regulatory Transparency Project, and the Knoxville, TN Lawyers Chapter. She served on the Editorial Advisory Board of Law360, the Labor Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Legal Advisory Board of the National Federation of Independent Business, and a Policy Fellow at the ACU Foundation.
Ms. McCutchen is a graduate of Western Illinois University and Northwestern University School of Law. She clerked for the Hon. Daniel Manion on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Former Solicitor of Labor, 2021-2025
Seema Nanda served as the U.S. Solicitor of Labor, from 2021 to 2025.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
Judge Readler earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he served as a law clerk to Judge Alan Norris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler then began practicing law in the Columbus office of the international law firm Jones Day, eventually spending ten years as a partner in the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice Group. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler appeared in state and federal trial and appellate courts around the country, most frequently the Supreme Court of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. Judge Readler also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court in McQuiggin v. Perkins on behalf of an inmate claiming actual innocence. His other pro bono representations include representing capital defendants before the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court of Ohio, as well as representing defendants sentenced to life in prison before the Sixth Circuit. While at Jones Day, Judge Readler traveled to Nairobi with Lawyers Without Borders to train Kenyan lawyers in prosecuting domestic violence cases, and he was also a recipient of the American Marshall Memorial Fellowship awarded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Following his career in private practice, Judge Readler served as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice from 2017 to 2019. In that role, Judge Readler led and supervised over 1,000 lawyers in the Department’s largest litigating division, briefing and arguing several cases on behalf of the United States in federal courts across the country, including high-profile cases significant to the Administration and the Department. In March 2019, Judge Readler was confirmed to serve as a Circuit Judge on the Sixth Circuit. He resides in Columbus.
Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Special Counsel to the President, Alliance Defending Freedom
Ryan Bangert serves as senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at Alliance Defending Freedom. He oversees ADF’s regulatory practice, government relations, and corporate engagement teams. He also advises executive leadership with strategic initiatives and appears as counsel for ADF clients.
Before joining ADF, Bangert served as deputy first assistant attorney general and deputy for legal counsel in the office of the Texas attorney general. In those roles, he oversaw the state’s Special Litigation Unit, which handled critical litigation against the federal government, and oversaw multiple divisions within the office. Prior to that, he served as deputy for civil litigation for Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, overseeing the state’s civil litigation divisions, including the consumer protection and antitrust divisions, with over 200 attorneys and staff. During his time in government service, Bangert handled a diverse array of matters involving Big Tech, election law, civil rights, multistate antitrust and consumer protection investigations, and many other issues.
Prior to his government service, Bangert was a litigation partner at Baker Botts L.L.P., where he was a member of the firm’s commercial litigation and appellate practice sections. A seasoned trial attorney, The Texas Lawyer ranked the verdict Bangert achieved in the Janvey v. Maldonado case as the #1 verdict in the securities category for 2015-2019, and The National Law Journal ranked it in its “Top 100 Verdicts of 2015.” He was named a “Texas Rising Star” for multiple years by Texas Lawyer and Law and Politics magazines. While at Baker Botts, he was a volunteer attorney for ADF and served as amicus counsel in numerous cases, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Salazar v. Buono, receiving the firm’s Opus Justitae Award in recognition of his outstanding commitment to pro bono service.
Bangert earned his J.D. from Southern Methodist University, where he was a Hatton Sumner’s scholar and graduated first in his class. He also participated in ADF’s Blackstone program and is a Blackstone Fellow. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Bangert is a member of the Philadelphia Society and Federalist Society. He is admitted to practice law in Texas, California (inactive), Missouri (inactive), the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal district and appellate courts. A frequent op-ed contributor, his work has appeared in National Review, Daily Wire, The Hill, Washington Examiner, The Federalist, Fox News, and RealClear Religion. He speaks nationally on constitutional, cultural, and religious liberty issues.
General Counsel, xAI and X
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Judge Kevin C. Newsom is a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He sits in Birmingham, Alabama.
Before his appointment to the bench, Judge Newsom was the head of the appellate practice group at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP and, before that, the Solicitor General of Alabama. As a practicing lawyer, Judge Newsom argued four cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and nearly 40 more in the United States Courts of Appeals and state supreme and appellate courts.
Judge Newsom graduated summa cum laude from Samford University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor on the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, Judge Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice David H. Souter of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge Newsom teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Associate General Counsel, OpenAI
Michael Trinh is currently Associate General Counsel at OpenAI working on litigation and regulatory matters. He was formerly Head of Litigation Advance at Google where he led a team handling a broad portfolio of litigation strategy, research, amici briefs, and proactive/enforcement litigation across the company’s product areas.
In prior roles over 14 years at Google, Mike managed a group defending patent litigation worldwide, and also served as product counsel at Google X for emerging ‘moonshots’ (innovation projects primarily in developing economies). He guided experimental aviation projects as they evolved from research concept towards market introduction, handling the legal/regulatory issues arising from high altitude balloon-mounted telecommunication networks, drone delivery of burritos, kite-generated electricity, and cargo airships. Before this science fiction, he was Litigation Counsel at Google, managing a team handling a fast-growing docket of 100+ patent litigation cases in courts worldwide.
Previously, he was a technology/IP litigation associate at Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe in San Francisco. He also handled national security issues while representing, pro bono, Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging their indefinite incarceration without ever being charged. Mike graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center (2005) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2002, B.S. Comp Sci). While he grew up in Raleigh, NC, he now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and a string cheese-seeking dog (who was once featured in the Financial Times).
General Counsel, Saronic Technologies
Tobi Young is the General Counsel of Saronic Technologies. Her responsibilities include managing global legal affairs, regulatory compliance, litigation, risk management, and government security, and corporate governance.
Tobi brings over 20 years of experience with sophisticated legal, regulatory, and compliance issues through leadership roles in all three branches of the federal government and in Fortune 500 companies. Among other governmental positions, she has been an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Office of the White House Counsel; a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch; and a press secretary for Congressman J.C. Watts. Tobi also currently serves as the Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee on the Halliburton Board of Directors (NYSE: HAL).
Tobi grew up in Oklahoma and is a proud member of the Chickasaw Nation. She recently became the youngest inductee into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. Tobi now lives in Austin with her husband Evan, a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court, and their daughter Romilly.
President, Notre Dame Student Chapter
Sex, Gender Identity, and the Courts
Montgomery Lawyer Chapter
Montgomery, ALStructure Over Spectacle: The Supreme Court's 2024 Term
Donald A. Daugherty, David C. Tryon
After several years of headline-grabbing decisions that reshaped national political debate—from abortion and affirmative action...
Showcase Panel 3: AI for the Law, and Law for AI
Ryan L. Bangert, James M. Burnham, Jennifer Walker Elrod, Kevin C. Newsom, Gabriel S. Powell, Mike Trinh, Tobi Young
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. The advent and rise of AI...
Showcase Panel 3: AI for the Law, and Law for AI
Ryan L. Bangert, James M. Burnham, Jennifer Walker Elrod, Kevin C. Newsom, Gabriel S. Powell, Mike Trinh, Tobi Young
CLE credit for this event is available at On-Demand CLE. The advent and rise of AI...
Agency Policy Making: Navigating a New Era in Labor Law
Labor & Employment Law Practice Group
Washington, DCAgency Policy Making: Navigating a New Era in Labor Law
Much of federal labor and employment law is shaped by the policy-making choices of agency...
Agency Policy Making: Navigating a New Era in Labor Law
Victoria Lipnic, Tammy Dee McCutchen, Seema Nanda, Chad A. Readler
Much of federal labor and employment law is shaped by the policy-making choices of agency...
Agency Policy Making: Navigating a New Era in Labor Law
Labor & Employment Law Practice Group
Washington, DCShowcase Panel 3: AI for the Law, and Law for AI
2025 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCShowcase Panel 3: AI for the Law, and Law for AI
Ryan L. Bangert, James M. Burnham, Jennifer Walker Elrod, Kevin C. Newsom, Mike Trinh, Tobi Young, Gabriel S. Powell
The advent and rise of AI over the past several years poses radical questions for...