Acting Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
Uttam Dhillon was appointed Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on July 2, 2018. As Acting Administrator, Mr. Dhillon leads a workforce of over 15,000 and oversees a budget of $3.2 billion. He is responsible for DEA’s enforcement, intelligence, administrative, and regulatory activities worldwide. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), and is co-chair of the IACP Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Committee.
Before joining DEA, Mr. Dhillon served as Deputy Counsel and Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States.
In 2006, Mr. Dhillon was confirmed by the United States Senate as the first Director of the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In that role, he worked closely with other federal agencies to coordinate the federal government’s anti-drug efforts. Prior to DHS, Mr. Dhillon served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Dhillon served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California. In that role, he successfully prosecuted complex investigations involving drug trafficking, money laundering, alien smuggling, and gun possession. He also argued multiple appeals before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Dhillon also has significant experience in the Legislative Branch, holding several senior roles, including Chief Oversight Counsel for the House Financial Services Committee, Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, and Senior Investigative Counsel for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Mr. Dhillon graduated from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He earned a Master of Arts degree in psychology from the University of California, San Diego and a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from California State University, Sacramento. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.
S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Professor Richard W. Painter received his B.A., summa cum laude, in history from Harvard University and his J.D. from Yale University, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. Following law school, he clerked for Judge John T. Noonan Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and later practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City and Finn Dixon & Herling in Stamford, Connecticut.
He has served as a tenured member of the law faculty at the University of Oregon School of Law and the University of Illinois College of Law, where he was the Guy Raymond and Mildred Van Voorhis Jones Professor of Law from 2002 to 2005.
From February 2005 to July 2007, he was Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel's office, serving as the chief ethics lawyer for the President, White House employees and senior nominees to Senate-confirmed positions in the Executive Branch. He is a member of the American Law Institute and is an advisor for the new ALI Principles of Government Ethics. He has also been active in the Professional Responsibility Section of the American Bar Association.
Professor Painter has also been active in law reform efforts aimed at deterring securities fraud and improving ethics of corporate managers and lawyers. A key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requiring the SEC to issue rules of professional responsibility for securities lawyers was based on earlier proposals Professor Painter made in law review articles and to the ABA and the SEC. He has given dozens of lectures on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to law schools, bar associations, and learned societies, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Painter has on four separate occasions provided invited testimony before committees of the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate on securities litigation and/or the role of attorneys in corporate governance.
His book, Getting the Government America Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference, was published by Oxford University Press in January 2009. He has written op-eds on government ethics for various publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and he has been interviewed several times on government ethics and corporate ethics by national news organizations, including appearances on Lawrence O'Donnell (MSNBC), Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN), CNN News, Fox News, National Public Radio All Things Considered, and Minnesota Public Radio News. In 2011, he testified before the U.S. House Government Oversight Committee on partisan political activity by government officials and reform of the Hatch Act. Professor Painter has also given expert testimony in cases involving securities transactions and the professional responsibility of lawyers. He testified as a defense witness in SEC. v. The Reserve Money Market Fund (SDNY, November 2012), a jury trial of an SEC enforcement action against the founders of the world's oldest money market fund that ended with a defense verdict on all of the fraud counts.
Professor Painter is the author of two casebooks: Securities Litigation and Enforcement (with Margaret Sachs and Donna Nagy; West 2003; Second Edition, 2007; Third Edition 2011) and Professional and Personal Responsibilities of the Lawyer (with Judge John T. Noonan Jr.; Foundation 1997; Second Edition, 2001; Third Edition 2011). He has written dozens of articles, book reviews, and essays, including a series of papers and a forthcoming book with Minnesota colleague Claire Hill on the personal responsibility of investment bankers.
Senior Counsel, Linklaters LLP, New York
EXPERIENCE
United States law and practise governing securities, futures and derivatives transactions; New York corporate and contract law
6th Annual Corporate Governance Conference: Securities Markets After Global Crossing and Enron
Uttam Dhillon, Edward Labaton, Richard W. Painter, Edward H. Fleischman
PROFESSOR PAINTER: Good morning. I’m Richard Painter, Professor of Securities Regulation and Lawyers’ Ethics at...