Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Trent McCotter is a partner with Boyden Gray PLLC. He previously served as Deputy Associate Attorney General of the United States and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Mr. McCotter maintains an extensive appellate practice. He has considerable experience identifying and briefing cases that draw the Supreme Court’s attention, having persuaded the Court to grant certiorari in numerous cases raising issues of sovereignty, constitutional rights, due process, and criminal law. He has authored and submitted over 60 briefs at the Court.
He has also personally argued more than fifteen federal appeals across the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, Federal, and D.C. Circuits—including once arguing three separate appeals in just four days. He has also twice argued before the 17-judge en banc Fifth Circuit. He has been counsel in over 50 other appeals raising matters from FOIA and the APA to constitutional rights and statutory construction.
As Deputy Associate Attorney General, Mr. McCotter oversaw DOJ’s Civil Appellate and Federal Programs branches, which are responsible for defending nearly all major litigation against the federal government. During his three years as a federal trial attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia’s “Rocket Docket,” Mr. McCotter won the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.
During his DOJ tenures, Mr. McCotter also assisted with the confirmations of two Supreme Court justices and over a dozen lower-court judges.
Mr. McCotter served as an inaugural clerk to the Hon. Steven J. Menashi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and also clerked for the Hon. R. Lanier Anderson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Associate Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia and President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia
Craig E. Leen is an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He also serves as the 139th President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia and a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
Prior to being sworn in, Judge Leen was a partner at K&L Gates in the Washington, DC office focused on labor & employment, litigation, government contracts, and administrative & regulatory law. He was also the pro bono coordinator for the DC office.
Judge Leen was formerly a federal agency head, serving as Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Prior to his federal service at OFCCP, Judge Leen was the City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, and before that was Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office. Earlier in his career, Judge Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.
In recognition of his public service, Judge Leen received the Secretary's Exceptional Achievement Award - Professional while at the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Paul S. Buchman Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Area of Legal Public Service while in local government.
Judge Leen received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and having served as a teaching fellow in both Contracts and Torts. Judge Leen received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he majored in both Government and Economics.
Deputy Legal Director, Governing for Impact
John is Deputy Legal Director at Governing for Impact and contributes to the organization’s legal work, including its development of challenges to harmful regulatory policies, preparation of legal primers, and regulatory comment practice. Previously, John served as an attorney with the Federal Programs Branch of the Department of Justice, where he defended major federal policies against legal challenge and advised federal agencies concerning litigation risk, and also worked at Democracy Forward, where he served as lead counsel in numerous lawsuits challenging unlawful federal action. John clerked for Judge Stanley Marcus on the Eleventh Circuit. A graduate of the University of Texas and Yale Law School, John grew up in Houston, Texas, and is barred in Texas and Washington, D.C.
Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director, Cicero Institute
Jonathan Wolfson is the Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director at the Cicero Institute. Before joining Cicero, he led the Policy Office at the U.S. Department of Labor where he managed DOL's deregulatory efforts and oversaw DOL's internal policy development think tank. He previously was a litigator and regulatory attorney at an international law firm representing clients before state and federal courts across the country. Following law school he served as a law clerk to The Honorable Edith Brown Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before law school, Jonathan was a policy analyst at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Jonathan received an A.B. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was an Olin Law and Economic Fellow and won the John M. Olin Prize for best original law and economics research.
Will Skillman Fellow in Education, Center for Education Policy, The Heritage Foundation
Jonathan Butcher is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (Bombardier Books, April 2022). He co-edited and wrote chapters in The Critical Classroom (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), discussing the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. In 2021, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster nominated Jonathan to serve on the board of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, a statewide charter school authorizer. He has researched and testified on education policy around the U.S.
Jonathan co-edited and wrote chapters in the book The Not-So-Great Society, which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K-12, and higher education.
In 2018 the Federal Commission on School Safety cited comments from his testimony in the commission’s final report. He has appeared on local and national TV outlets, including C-SPAN, Fox News, and HBO’s Vice News Tonight, and he has been a guest on many radio programs. His commentary has appeared nationally in places such as the Wall Street Journal, Education Week, National Review Online, Newsweek.com, and Forbes.com, along with newspapers around the country.
In 2017 he was a co-recipient of the State Policy Network’s Bob Williams Award for Most Influential Research for a proposal to protect free speech on campus, alongside Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Jim Manley of the Goldwater Institute.
Jonathan previously served as the education director at the Goldwater Institute, where he remains a senior fellow. He was a member of the Arizona Department of Education’s first Steering Committee for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the nation’s first education savings account program. He is also a Senior Fellow with The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a nonpartisan research organization, and a contributing scholar for the Georgia Center for Opportunity.
Prior to joining Goldwater, Jonathan was the director of accountability for the South Carolina Public Charter School District. Jonathan previously studied education policy at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and worked with the School Choice Demonstration Project, the research team that evaluated voucher programs in Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee, Wisc.
Jonathan holds a B.A. in English from Furman University and an M.A. in economics from the University of Arkansas.
Co-Founder and President, Defense of Freedom Institute
Bob is a co-founder and President of DFI. He previously served as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Education from 2017 through 2020 and Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education from 2005 until 2009.
During his most recent tenure at the Department, Bob served on the Secretary’s Leadership Team as a strategic and legal adviser on higher education, civil rights, and congressional oversight matters. As the Department’s Regulatory Reform Officer, he also supervised the implementation of the Secretary’s regulatory agenda and was an architect of the Secretary’s reforms concerning Title IX and the Higher Education Act. As Deputy General Counsel, Bob advised on a wide variety of regulatory, legislative, and oversight matters.
Prior to joining the Department in 2017, Bob was vice president for regulatory compliance matters for several postsecondary institutions and practiced education and employment law in Washington, D.C. Before coming to the Department in 2005, he practiced law in New Orleans, litigating commercial, employment, and bankruptcy cases in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi.
Bob earned his A.B. in History from Georgetown University, studied British government and international politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and received his law degree from Tulane University Law School. His articles have been published by National Review, Real Clear Education, Washington Examiner, and other media outlets. Fox News has featured his work.
Bob is a member of the District of Columbia and Louisiana Bars and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, editor in chief of the Education Gadfly Weekly, host of the Education Gadfly Show podcast, and a contributor at Forbes.com. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, editor of Education for Upward Mobility, and co-editor of How to Educate an American and Follow the Science to School. An expert on charter schools, school accountability, evidence-based practices, and trends in test scores and other student outcomes, Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement and the Policy Innovators in Education Network, and serves on the board of the Association of American Educators Foundation. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Director of Research, National Association of Scholars
David Randall is director of research at the National Association of Scholars (NAS). He has co-authored The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science: Causes, Consequences, and the Road to Reform (2018), as well as articles on the irreproducibility crisis for The Wall Street Journal and The Hill. He has also written reports for the NAS on civics education, social justice education, college common readings, and the College Board’s Advanced Placement European History examination. His academic works include The Concept of Conversation: From Cicero’s Sermo to the Grand Siècle’s Conversation (2018) and The Conversational Enlightenment: The Reconception of Rhetoric in Eighteenth-Century Thought (2019).
David earned a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University, an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University, a master’s degree in library science from the Palmer School at Long Island University, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. Prior to working at NAS he was the sole librarian at the John McEnroe Library at New York Studio School, where he secured a number of grants for the school’s Lecture Series Archive Digitization Project.
Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce
Kent Talbert is a Washington, DC-based attorney with over 25 years’ experience in providing advice on education law and policy in Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and the private sector. His practice includes legal and policy advice to colleges and universities, for-profit schools, accrediting agencies, the pre-K-12 sector, charter school organizations, trade associations, and education-focused companies, as well as service as an expert witness. He currently serves as Investigative Counsel, U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Prior to establishing his firm, Mr. Talbert practiced at Talbert & Eitel, PLLC from 2010-2012. From 2006-2009 he served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Education, advising the Secretary of Education on a broad range of legal and policy matters, including the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the drafting and implementation of regulations under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and major education law cases pending before the Supreme Court of the United States and other appellate and trial courts. During his tenure as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Chief Regulatory Officer for the Department, overseeing all documents for publication in the Federal Register.
He has provided legal and strategic advice on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans With Disabilities Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act ("Clery Act"), Federal Student Aid program reviews, negotiated rulemaking, and accreditation.
Prior to his service as General Counsel, Mr. Talbert served as the Department's Deputy General Counsel for Departmental and Legislative Service from 2001-2006. Earlier in his career, Mr. Talbert served for over 12 years on House and Senate staff, both as Education Policy Counsel for the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives, and as a professional staff member of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources (now Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Talbert is a member of the Bars of the District of Columbia and South Carolina, the Alliance of Public Charter School Attorneys, and the National Association of College and University Attorneys where he serves on the Committee on Legal Education. He is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and all federal courts in South Carolina and Washington, DC.
Associate Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia and President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia
Craig E. Leen is an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He also serves as the 139th President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia and a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
Prior to being sworn in, Judge Leen was a partner at K&L Gates in the Washington, DC office focused on labor & employment, litigation, government contracts, and administrative & regulatory law. He was also the pro bono coordinator for the DC office.
Judge Leen was formerly a federal agency head, serving as Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Prior to his federal service at OFCCP, Judge Leen was the City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, and before that was Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office. Earlier in his career, Judge Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.
In recognition of his public service, Judge Leen received the Secretary's Exceptional Achievement Award - Professional while at the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Paul S. Buchman Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Area of Legal Public Service while in local government.
Judge Leen received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and having served as a teaching fellow in both Contracts and Torts. Judge Leen received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he majored in both Government and Economics.
Deputy Legal Director, Governing for Impact
John is Deputy Legal Director at Governing for Impact and contributes to the organization’s legal work, including its development of challenges to harmful regulatory policies, preparation of legal primers, and regulatory comment practice. Previously, John served as an attorney with the Federal Programs Branch of the Department of Justice, where he defended major federal policies against legal challenge and advised federal agencies concerning litigation risk, and also worked at Democracy Forward, where he served as lead counsel in numerous lawsuits challenging unlawful federal action. John clerked for Judge Stanley Marcus on the Eleventh Circuit. A graduate of the University of Texas and Yale Law School, John grew up in Houston, Texas, and is barred in Texas and Washington, D.C.
Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director, Cicero Institute
Jonathan Wolfson is the Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director at the Cicero Institute. Before joining Cicero, he led the Policy Office at the U.S. Department of Labor where he managed DOL's deregulatory efforts and oversaw DOL's internal policy development think tank. He previously was a litigator and regulatory attorney at an international law firm representing clients before state and federal courts across the country. Following law school he served as a law clerk to The Honorable Edith Brown Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before law school, Jonathan was a policy analyst at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Jonathan received an A.B. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was an Olin Law and Economic Fellow and won the John M. Olin Prize for best original law and economics research.
Associate Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia and President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia
Craig E. Leen is an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He also serves as the 139th President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia and a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University School of Law.
Prior to being sworn in, Judge Leen was a partner at K&L Gates in the Washington, DC office focused on labor & employment, litigation, government contracts, and administrative & regulatory law. He was also the pro bono coordinator for the DC office.
Judge Leen was formerly a federal agency head, serving as Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Prior to his federal service at OFCCP, Judge Leen was the City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, and before that was Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office. Earlier in his career, Judge Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.
In recognition of his public service, Judge Leen received the Secretary's Exceptional Achievement Award - Professional while at the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Paul S. Buchman Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Area of Legal Public Service while in local government.
Judge Leen received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, graduating as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and having served as a teaching fellow in both Contracts and Torts. Judge Leen received his Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Georgetown University, where he majored in both Government and Economics.
Deputy Legal Director, Governing for Impact
John is Deputy Legal Director at Governing for Impact and contributes to the organization’s legal work, including its development of challenges to harmful regulatory policies, preparation of legal primers, and regulatory comment practice. Previously, John served as an attorney with the Federal Programs Branch of the Department of Justice, where he defended major federal policies against legal challenge and advised federal agencies concerning litigation risk, and also worked at Democracy Forward, where he served as lead counsel in numerous lawsuits challenging unlawful federal action. John clerked for Judge Stanley Marcus on the Eleventh Circuit. A graduate of the University of Texas and Yale Law School, John grew up in Houston, Texas, and is barred in Texas and Washington, D.C.
Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director, Cicero Institute
Jonathan Wolfson is the Chief Legal Officer and Policy Director at the Cicero Institute. Before joining Cicero, he led the Policy Office at the U.S. Department of Labor where he managed DOL's deregulatory efforts and oversaw DOL's internal policy development think tank. He previously was a litigator and regulatory attorney at an international law firm representing clients before state and federal courts across the country. Following law school he served as a law clerk to The Honorable Edith Brown Clement of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before law school, Jonathan was a policy analyst at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Jonathan received an A.B. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was an Olin Law and Economic Fellow and won the John M. Olin Prize for best original law and economics research.
Chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity
Linda Chavez is Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity. She has published opinions and columns in newspapers across the country and appears regularly on cable news. Chavez is the author of the three books: Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation, An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal, and Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. She has been honored by the Library of Congress as a "Living Legend" and as nominee for Secretary of Labor by President George W. Bush.
Chavez has held many appointed positions and has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards. Among her appointed positions has been Chairman, National Commission on Migrant Education (1988-1992); White House Director of Public Liaison (1985); Staff Director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1983-1985); and member of the Administrative Conference of the United States (1984-1986). Chavez was also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Maryland in 1986 and was elected by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to serve a four-year term as U.S. Expert to the U.N. Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.
Chavez earned her BA from the University of Colorado.
Senior Scholar, Manhattan Institute; Professor of Law Emerita, University of San Diego
Gail Heriot is a Senior Scholar at the Manhattan Institute, a Professor of Law Emerita at the University of San Diego and the Chairman of the Board of the American Civil Rights Project. She served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for 18 years. Her new book is entitled “Why We Walk on Eggshells: How Our Civil Rights Laws Stifle Our Public Discourse.”
Executive Director & Secretary, American Civil Rights Project
Dan Morenoff is the executive director at the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
His work focuses on protecting and, where necessary, restoring the primacy of all Americans' shared civil rights against the identitarian alternative.
Before practicing law, Morenoff served on the legislative staff of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX). Morenoff holds a B.A. from Columbia College of Columbia University in the City of New York and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He has also served as an officer or director of several community organizations in Dallas, Texas.
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