Acting Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional Responsibility, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Brian M. Fish is currently the Senior Advisor to the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security where he works on immigration and law enforcement issues. Previously, he was a trial attorney with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he represented the Department of Homeland Security in removal hearings before the U.S. Immigration Court. Additionally, he was a Special Assistant United States Attorney and a Baltimore City homicide prosecutor. He is a member of the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group Executive Committee and the President of its Baltimore Lawyers Chapter. He earned his B.A. from LaSalle University in 1992 and his J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law in 1998.
Partner, Arnold & Porter
John Elwood is the head of Arnold & Porter’s Appellate and Supreme Court practice. He has argued before the Supreme Court nine times, and appeared before most of the federal courts of appeals. He has successfully argued cases across a broad cross-section of subjects, with particular experience in environmental law, the False Claims Act, government contracting, and federal criminal law
Mr. Elwood’s work has earned him recognition as one of Washington’s top Supreme Court lawyers (Washingtonian, 2013), as one of “a small group of lawyers” with an “outsized influence at the U.S. Supreme Court” (Reuters, 2014), and as one of the country’s most innovative lawyers (Financial Times, 2014). Chambers USA reports that “[t]he much-admired John Elwood is praised for his advocacy skills” (2013), and describes Mr. Elwood as “phenomenal” (2014), “incredibly talented” (2012), and “a much-loved and widely respected lawyer who is quick on his feet” (2010).
Before joining the firm, Mr. Elwood served in senior-level positions in the U.S. Department of Justice. Beginning as an Assistant to the Solicitor General, and continuing with the firm, he has briefed more than 20 merits cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, and has briefed approximately 135 cases at the certiorari stage. As the senior Deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel, he advised the White House and federal agencies on a range of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory issues.
Acting Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional Responsibility, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Brian M. Fish is currently the Senior Advisor to the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security where he works on immigration and law enforcement issues. Previously, he was a trial attorney with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he represented the Department of Homeland Security in removal hearings before the U.S. Immigration Court. Additionally, he was a Special Assistant United States Attorney and a Baltimore City homicide prosecutor. He is a member of the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group Executive Committee and the President of its Baltimore Lawyers Chapter. He earned his B.A. from LaSalle University in 1992 and his J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law in 1998.
State Representative, Ohio House of Representatives, District 56
State Representative Adam Mathews is serving his second term in the Ohio House of Representatives. He represents the 56th Ohio House District, which encompasses southwest and central Warren County including Lebanon, South Lebanon, and Mason.
Rep. Mathews worked as a civilian engineer for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program before returning to Notre Dame to become an intellectual property attorney. He continues to practice and represents inventors, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. He formerly served as the Vice Mayor of Lebanon. The representative is also an intellectual property and corporate attorney, and that he is licensed and has appeared before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States
Mathews is also very involved in his community. He has served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Elizabeth’s New Life Center, a network of pro-life women’s centers throughout Southwest Ohio. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Cincinnati Federalist Society, St. Thomas More Society of Cincinnati, the Warren County Republican Party, and Kiwanis of Lebanon.
Mathews was formerly Chairman of the Intellectual Property Section of the Ohio State Bar Association, President of the Notre Dame Club of Dayton, and a member of the St. Francis de Sales Parish Council and Knights of Columbus. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Lebanon Area Chamber of Commerce.
He married his wife Amanda in 2011, and they live with their five children in Lebanon.
Judge, United States District Court, District of Columbia
Judge Trevor N. McFadden was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 2017. He received his B.A. in 2001 from Wheaton College, IL, magna cum laude. In 2006, he received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he graduated Order of the Coif and was an editor for the Virginia Law Review.
Following graduation from law school, Judge McFadden clerked for Judge Steven Colloton, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He then joined the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General and as Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia. Judge McFadden subsequently became a partner at Baker & McKenzie LLP in Washington, DC, where he focused on white collar investigations. He is also co-author of a treatise, Corporate Settlement Tools: DPAs, NPAs, and Cooperation Agreements.
After four years in private practice, Judge McFadden returned to the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was Deputy Assistant Attorney General and acted as the second-in-command of the Department's Criminal Division. As Deputy Assistant Attorney General, he managed the Division's Fraud and Appellate Sections.
Judge McFadden also has extensive experience in law enforcement. He served as an officer with the Fairfax County, VA, Police Department and as a deputy sheriff in Madison County, VA.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Professor Andrew Kent teaches and writes about constitutional law, foreign relations law, federal courts and procedure, national security law, public international law, professional responsibility and legal ethics. He received the Dean’s Distinguished Research Award (2016-17) for his scholarship.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Professor Kent clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. Carol B. Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Before joining Fordham’s faculty, he was a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School and an attorney at both Sullivan & Cromwell and WilmerHale.
From 2014-2015, Professor Kent served as Senior Counsel to the Solicitor General, State of New York, Office of the Attorney General.
Professor Kent is a member of the New York City Bar’s Professional Responsibility Committee. He provides appellate representation to the indigent as a member of the Pro Bono Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Professor of History; Director of the Clemson Cyberinstitute, Clemson University
Orville Vernon Burton is the inaugural Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Chair of History and Professor of Pan-African Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, and Computer Science at Clemson University. He directed the Clemson CyberInstitute from 2010 to 2016. In 2022 Burton received the Clemson University Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievements in Research; in 2018, he was part of the initial University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award group of scholars. In 2016 Burton received the College of Architecture, Art, and Humanities Dean’s Award for “Excellence in Research” and in 2019 the College’s award for “Outstanding Achievement in Service.” From 2008-2010, he was the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. He was the founding Director of the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science at the University of Illinois, where he is emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, and Professor of History, African American Studies, and Sociology. At the University of Illinois, he continues as a Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications where he served as Associate Director for Humanities and Social Sciences from 2002-2010. He serves as Executive Director of the College of Charleston’s Low Country and Atlantic World Program; in 2022 the program honored Burton by designating the best conference paper given annually, the Vernon Burton Research Award. Burton served as interim chair, and then vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Congressional National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, 2009-2017. In 2007 the Illinois State legislature honored him with a special resolution for his contributions as a scholar, teacher, and citizen of Illinois. A recognized authority on race relations, Burton is often called upon as an expert witness in discrimination and voting rights cases throughout the United States.
Burton is a prolific author and scholar (more than twenty authored or edited books and nearly three hundred articles) and author or director of numerous digital humanities projects. The Age of Lincoln (2007) won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Literary Award for Nonfiction and was selected for Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and Military Book Club. One reviewer proclaimed, “If the Civil War era was America's ‘Iliad,’ then historian Orville Vernon Burton is our latest Homer.” The book was featured at sessions of the annual meetings of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Social Science History Association, and the Southern Intellectual History Circle; the latter was the basis for a forum published in The Journal of the Historical Society. His most recent book, Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court (Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2021), co-authored with Armand Derfner, was deemed “authoritative and highly readable” by reviewer Randall Kennedy of Harvard University Law School in The Nation. The book has been featured at sessions of the 2021 Social Science History Association and the 2022 Midwestern Political Science Association, and is scheduled for the upcoming meetings of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the American Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (1985) was featured at sessions of the Southern Historical Association and the Social Science History Association annual meetings. C. Vann Woodward in the New York Review of Books pronounced In My Father’s House “A highly quantified, computerized, and methodologically sophisticated study. For thoroughness and comprehensiveness, it rivals, if it does not exceed, any historical investigation of an American community.” Justice Deferred, The Age of Lincoln, and In My Father’s House were nominated for Pulitzers.
Recognized for his teaching, Burton was selected nationwide as the 1999 U.S. Research and Doctoral University Professor of the Year (presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education). In 2004 he received the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Prize. At the University of Illinois, he won teaching awards at the department, school, college, and campus levels. He was the recipient of the 2001-2002 Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award and received the 2006 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. He was initially appointed an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer in 2004, and has been reappointed every term, now till 2027.
He has served as president of the Southern Historical Association and of the Agricultural History Society. He was elected to honorary life membership in BrANCH (British American Nineteenth-Century Historians). Among his honors are fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Humanities Center, the U.S. Department of Education, National Park Service, and the Carnegie Foundation. He was a Pew National Fellow Carnegie Scholar for 2000-2001. He was elected to the Society of American Historians and was one of ten historians selected to contribute to the Presidential Inaugural Portfolio (January 21, 2013) by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. Burton was elected into the S.C. Academy of Authors in 2015, and in 2017 he received the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities from the South Carolina Humanities Council, and in 2021 he was awarded the Benjamin E. Mays Legacy Award. In 2022 he was appointed to the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission and inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Devon Westhill is the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s nomination of Westhill on October 7, 2025.
Westhill returns to the USDA where he previously headed the civil rights office as Deputy Assistant Secretary in President Trump’s first term. His previous government appointments also include service at the U.S. Department of Labor, liaison to the Administrative Conference of the U.S., and liaison to the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Prior to returning to government service, Westhill was President and General Counsel of a nonprofit civil rights organization.
Westhill has testified on civil rights matters before Congress, federal agencies, and as an expert witness in federal court. He has spoken hundreds of times at college campuses, conferences, and on radio and TV programs, and he is frequently quoted in print publications, and his writing has appeared in numerous national outlets. A U.S. Navy veteran, Westhill earned his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his JD from the University of Florida.
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