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.
Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, UpStream Healthcare
William S.W. Chang is the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary at UpStream Healthcare, having previously served in senior roles at McKesson Corporation and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
At McKesson, Chang was Vice President of Regulatory Policy and Chief Legal Counsel. He led cross-functional teams that focused on enterprise priorities in key regulatory spaces. Chang advised the wide spectrum of McKesson’s businesses, including U.S. pharmaceutical distribution, medical-supply distribution, specialty and independent-community pharmacy, physician-practice management, prescription-technology services, medication access-and-adherence programs, and electronic health records.
At HHS, Chang served as Deputy General Counsel for public health, litigation, and investigations. Chang was one of the lead attorneys supporting Operation Warp Speed, working with public and private partners to build nationwide distribution and administration solutions for COVID-19 vaccines. Chang worked closely with the Deputy Secretary, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the HHS Office of the Inspector General, and the U.S. Department of Justice to reform the Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark Law in order to facilitate value-based care.
At the Department of Justice, Chang led healthcare-fraud investigations of public and private companies and individuals, and his cases spanned several districts and involved multiple state and federal agencies as well as parallel civil proceedings.
Chang has been repeatedly recognized for his contributions to healthcare. In 2022, he was the National Winner of the American Pharmacists Association Friend of Pharmacy Immunization Champion Award. The award recognized Chang for his extraordinary contributions toward fully enfranchising the pharmacy workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. For his public-health service, including during the pandemic, Chang received the Assistant Secretary for Health Exceptional Service Medal. The Medal is the highest decoration awarded to a civilian by the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. For his service at the Department of Justice, Chang received numerous accolades. Among those accolades, he twice received the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service; the HHS Inspector General’s Award for Excellence in Fighting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse; and the Commendation for Demonstrated Excellence from the FBI Director.
Senior Special Counsel, Securities & Exchange Commission
J.B. Tarter serves as the Senior Special Counsel for the Cybersecurity Program Office at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. He has over a decade of government service, having previously held senior appointments in the legal offices of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Prior to his government service he was an appellate attorney with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, where he represented parties before the U.S. Supreme Court and numerous federal Courts of Appeals. J.B. clerked for then-Chief Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit. He has been profiled by Forbes magazine, taught courses on Executive Power in Wartime for the State Bar of Texas, and presented on ethics and professionalism at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School. A long-time member of the Federalist Society, he is a graduate of the College of Southern Idaho, Emory University, and Harvard Law School.
United States Senator, Texas
Ted Cruz represents 28 million Texans in the U.S. Senate as a passionate fighter for limited government and economic growth. He has authored 39 legislative measures signed into law. Recent victories include expanding 529 college savings accounts to allow parents to save for K–12 public, private, and religious education, leading the effort to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, imposing sanctions on terrorists who use civilians as human shields, designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, reauthorizing and reforming NASA, ensuring the availability of additional records to help solve civil rights cold cases, supporting thousands of Texas jobs, and leading the fight to confirm principled constitutionalists to our courts.
Senator Cruz is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, a former law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and former solicitor general of Texas. He has argued nine cases before the Supreme Court. In November of 2018, he was re-elected to the Senate by the people of Texas.
Managing Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California
Justice, Texas First Court of Appeals
Susanna Dokupil was elected to the First Court of Appeals in November 2024. With over two decades of experience, Susanna’s career has spanned all three branches of government as well as private practice. She has been a Special Counsel and Assistant Solicitor General in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas as well as a Special Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee and a law clerk to the Hon. Jerry Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
In her role as Special Counsel at the Texas Attorney General’s office, Susanna led teams of litigators focused on protecting Texas’s interests against agency regulations that exceeded the agency’s statutory and constitutional power. As an Assistant Solicitor General, she drafted briefs before the Fifth Circuit and United States Supreme Court, primarily focused on First Amendment issues. Susanna’s experience in private practice has combined traditional commercial litigation with advising technology companies and founders on strategic communications.
Susanna has been a prolific speaker and writer on law and public policy topics, including articles in The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, The Texas Review of Law & Politics, American Enterprise, the Washington Times, and the Houston Chronicle, among others.
Susanna is a graduate of Harvard Law School and also holds degrees from The George Washington University and Baylor University. She lives in Houston and has four children.
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.
Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law Houston
Matt Festa teaches and researches in the areas of property law and land use, state & local government, energy & environmental law, trusts & estates, legal history, and national security law. His scholarship focuses on the relation between property rights and public control in land use planning and government regulation; on the role of property rights in constitutional law and history; and on property and the rule of law in contemporary international affairs.
Professor Festa joined the South Texas College of Law Houston faculty in 2007, after serving as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law. Prior to teaching, he practiced in litigation, land use, environmental, and energy law at Locke Lord LLP. He served as a law clerk to federal judges on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Prof. Festa attended Vanderbilt University, where he was the Executive Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review and earned a masters’ degree in history. Prior to law school he served in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, and earned a masters’ degree in public administration. He earned his undergraduate degree in history and English at the University of Notre Dame.
Professor Festa currently serves as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army Reserve, where he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of International & Operational Law at the ABA-accredited Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, and is also an Instructor with the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies. He is the editor of the Land Use Prof Blog, and lives in the “Unzoned City” of Houston with his spouse, who teaches at Rice University, and their two children.
Partner and Co-Chair, Constitutional and Appellate Law Practice Group, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Allyson N. Ho is a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and co‐chair of the Firm’s nationwide Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group.
Mrs. Ho is “undoubtedly one of the premier appellate lawyers in the United States” (Chambers). She has presented over 100 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide, including multiple high‐stakes cases on behalf of business before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Her most significant winning arguments include a U.S. Supreme Court reversal worth billions of dollars for unionized employers in the Sixth Circuit; a U.S. Supreme Court reversal limiting the power of federal regulators; a multi‐billion dollar environmental win in the Fifth Circuit; a multi‐billion dollar commercial victory for the founder of a technology company in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court; a billion dollar environmental win in the Houston Court of Appeals; a nine‐figure commercial victory in the Corpus Christi Court of Appeals; and a nine‐figure arbitration win in the Fifth Circuit.
Among her numerous accolades, Mrs. Ho is one of only a small group of appellate lawyers nationwide, and the only one in Texas, to be nationally ranked by Chambers every year for the past ten years (2012‐21). She is also one of the few appellate lawyers nationwide to be named to the BTI Client Service All‐Stars List, an honor bestowed by the corporate counsel community for lawyers “who stand above all the others in delivering the absolute best in client service.” She is also routinely named as a leading appellate lawyer by Benchmark, The Best Lawyers in America®, The Legal 500, Texas Super Lawyers, and D Magazine.
Mrs. Ho has received the Gregory S. Coleman Outstanding Appellate Lawyer Award (Texas Bar Foundation, June 22, 2018), been named a “Distinguished Leader” (Texas Lawyer, Sep. 1, 2017) and “Appellate MVP” (Law360, Nov. 23, 2015), and been recognized on the “Appellate Hot List” (National Law Journal, Nov. 16, 2015). In addition, she has been profiled in “Texas Powerhouse” (Law360, Aug. 2, 2021), “Texas Appellate Power Couple” (Texas Lawbook, January 7, 2021), “Litigators of the Week” (The American Lawyer, May 8, 2020), “Litigation Powerhouse” (Law360, Aug. 10, 2016), “Supreme Court Insider” (National Law Journal, July 21, 2016), “Supreme Court Specialists, Mostly Male, Dominated Arguments This Term” (National Law Journal, May 11, 2016), “Attorney of the Year Finalist” (Texas Lawyer, Nov. 2, 2015), “Litigation Department of the Year” (Texas Lawyer, June 1, 2015), “Employment Group of the Year” (Law360, Jan. 13, 2015), “A Supreme Month: Lawyer Credits Preparedness in Ability to Argue Two U.S. High Court Cases in Three Weeks” (Texas Lawyer, Dec. 8, 2014), “High Court Debuts for Two Lawyers” (National Law Journal, Nov. 3, 2014), “Women in Business Awards” (Dallas Business Journal, Aug 29, 2014), “Litigation Departments of the Year” (Texas Lawyer, June 2, 2014), “Winning Women” (Texas Lawyer, Aug. 22, 2011), and “High court practitioners: increasingly diverse” (National Law Journal, June 6, 2011).
Federal and State Appellate Practice
Mrs. Ho has argued a series of high stakes, landmark cases on behalf of the business community before the U.S. Supreme Court. National Law Journal called her a “Veteran SCOTUS Advocate” in the “upper echelons of Supreme Court practice.” Law360 named her a “Supreme Court Star” and “one of the nation’s preeminent appellate lawyers.” And EmpiricalSCOTUS.com ranked her among “the most successful attorneys that currently practice before the Court.” Mrs. Ho once argued two significant business cases before the Court within the span of 21 days—including a “significant ruling for employers” that “paved a new path for companies paying millions of dollars in retiree health care benefits” (Law360), as well as a landmark administrative law dispute in which “several justices agreed with Ho’s contention that SCOTUS should revisit and overrule its own precedent” (Law360). She also prevailed against the EEOC in a case that the employment defense bar called “good news for employers across the country.” And in “the most important patent case in modern history” according to patent law experts, her argument before the Court was credited for “pick[ing] up two votes that pundits thought unreachable.”
She has appeared before every federal court of appeals in the country, including en banc arguments before the Fourth and Sixth Circuits. She has successfully represented business clients in every circuit, including the First (Pruco Life Insurance Company), Second (Swiss Federation; Rite Aid), Third (Johnson & Johnson), Fourth (Genex Services), Fifth (United Space Alliance LLC; Elliott Co.; MERSCORP; 24 Hour Fitness USA, Inc.; Stream Energy; Health Management Systems), Sixth (Deutsche Bank; American Airlines; M&G Polymers), Seventh (Expedia), Eighth (Cotter), Ninth (Boeing; JP Morgan Chase Bank), Tenth (Mitchell International), Eleventh (AstraZeneca), D.C. (FedEx), and Federal (Repros Therapeutics) Circuits.
In addition, Mrs. Ho regularly appears in state appellate courts across the country. She has argued numerous cases in the Texas Supreme Court, Texas appellate courts in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and Eastland, and state appellate courts in Arizona, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, prevailing on behalf of Ford Motor Company, PepsiCo, International Paper, Tenet, GameStop, Deutsche Bank, and Unit.
Government and Public Service Experience
Mrs. Ho has a distinguished record of experience at the highest levels of the federal government. She served as Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, Counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft, and law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Jacques L. Wiener Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Her record of public service also includes appointments to various boards and commissions. Among the most notable are her election as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a trustee of the United States Supreme Court Historical Society, and a trustee of the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society. She is also vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee, appointed by U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to evaluate potential appointments of all federal judges and U.S. Attorneys in Texas, and has previously served on the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas.
Other Background Information
An active pro bono litigator, Mrs. Ho works most frequently with the First Liberty Institute and as amicus counsel for the State and Local Legal Center, the National Organization for Victim Assistance, and the National Crime Victim Law Institute. She is a frequent public speaker and active member of the Federalist Society, the American Law Institute, and the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Policy Advisory Board.
Mrs. Ho graduated from Duke University magna cum laude with a B.A. in English, Rice University with an M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors. She was a member of the Law Review and Order of the Coif. She and her husband Jim, a federal judge, have a twin daughter and son.
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, DCArkansas Supreme Court Clarifies Standard for Awarding Punitive Damages
William S.W Chang
On December 8, 2011, the Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed a jury’s award of approximately...
Supreme Court Narrowly Interprets the Relitigation Exception of the Anti-Injunction Act
J.B. Tarter
In Smith v. Bayer Corp.,1 the Supreme Court unanimously held that a federal district court...
United States Supreme Court Term in Review
Salazar v. Buono and the Establishment Clause
Ted Cruz, Peter J. Eliasberg, Susanna Dokupil
In 1934, with the permission of the U.S. government, the Veterans of Foreign Wars erected...
Barwatch Bulletin -- February 14, 2009
Bioethics and the LawSaturday morning featured a roundtable discussion entitled "Hot Topics in Bioethics and...