Thomas Berry is the director in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation and clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His academic work has appeared in NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, Washington and Lee Law Review Online, and Federalist Society Review. His popular writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Law Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review Online, and The Hill Online. He has testified before the U.S. Senate, and his work has been cited by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Berry holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was a senior editor on the Stanford Law and Policy Review and a Bradley Student Fellow in the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. He graduated with a B.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe.

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Alan Gura

Vice President for Litigation, Institute for Free Speech

Biography

Alan joined the Institute for Free Speech as Vice President for Litigation in February 2021. In this role, Alan directs the Institute’s litigation and legal advocacy, leads our in-house legal team, and manages and works to expand our network of volunteer attorneys.

Prior to joining the Institute, Alan litigated complex federal matters for twenty years, in his own practice and as a partner in various Washington-area firms. He argued and won landmark constitutional cases in the United States Supreme Court and has appeared before numerous appellate and district courts throughout the country. Alan often speaks at law schools and continuing legal education seminars. He also teaches strategic/public interest litigation as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Alan began his career clerking for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. He has also served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley Austin, and as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.

Alan earned his J.D. at Georgetown (1995) and his B.A. at Cornell University (1992). He is an active member in good standing of the Virginia, District of Columbia, and California bars, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and various federal appellate and district court bars.

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Pam Wilmot

Executive Director, Common Cause Massachusetts

Biography

Pam Wilmot is the Executive Director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a post she has held since 2002, as well as from 1989-1993. She is responsible for leading democracy reform efforts statewide, as well as serving as a lobbyist and managing Common Cause’s Boston office.

Pam has been an advocate for government reform and consumer and environmental issues for over 20 years. She is a frequent commentator on Massachusetts public affairs. Pam also has worked for Rhode Island and Mass PIRG, the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Bottle Bill campaigns, Connecticut Citizens Action Group, and the Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board. She is a graduate of Brown University, Northeastern University School of Law, and Smith College School for Social Work.

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Bruce N. Cameron

Staff Attorney, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation

Biography

Professor Bruce N. Cameron teaches Employment Discrimination with a Focus on Faith, Labor Law, and administers the Right to Work Practicum. Prior to coming to Regent, he spent over 30 years litigating religious freedom and constitutional law cases in the employment context. During that time, he never lost a Title VII religious accommodation case in court. He counseled employees in virtually every state as to their rights and formally represented clients in administrative or judicial proceedings in at least 25 states. Cameron is currently on staff with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. This is his 47th year with the Foundation and his 16th year teaching at Regent Law.

Cameron was an Andrews Scholar, an intern with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and a member of the U.S. Department of Justice Honors Program. He was a member of the Virginia State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2015-2019). He is a member of the Accrediting Association of Seventh-day Adventist Schools, Colleges, and Universities; the Federalist Society, the Christian Legal Society, several state bars, and a number of federal bars, including the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has appeared frequently on television and radio shows, including appearances on Dr. Dobson’s Focus on the Family. His hobbies over the years are sports cars, motorcycles, sailing, and studying and teaching the Bible.

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Stephen Migala

Attorney-Adviser, U.S. Department of State

Biography

Stephen Migala is an attorney adviser for the U.S. State Department, where he counsels on export-related national security law. Before that, he worked for both a boutique firm and a large international law firm, practicing appellate and complex civil litigation, as well as international trade and export compliance, among other areas. Prior to attending law school, Stephen served as an officer and pilot in the U.S. Air Force.

Stephen earned his J.D. and his LL.M. in National Security Law, with distinction, from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was the student editor in chief of the Food and Drug Law Journal. He received his B.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his M.B.A. from Colorado State University.

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Anne Joseph O'Connell

Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

Biography

Anne Joseph O’Connell is a lawyer and social scientist (with graduate training in economics and political science) whose research and teaching focus on administrative law and the federal bureaucracy. Outside of the law school, she was a presidentially appointed member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency dedicated to improving regulatory procedures, from October 2022 to January 2025. O’Connell is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration and an elected member of the American Law Institute. She frequently consults with congressional staff, nonprofit organizations, and others, and has testified before Congress. She is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for the 2024-2025 academic year.

At Stanford Law School, O’Connell teaches Administrative Law, Advanced Administrative Law, and Constitutional Law. The class of 2020 chose her to receive the Hurlbut Award, which is given to one professor “who strives to make teaching an art.” She co-chaired the steering committee for Stanford University’s Faculty Women’s Forum, which works to enable all women faculty to thrive, from August 2022 to January 2024 and jointly conducted two surveys on COVID’s impacts on faculty for FWF. Prior to joining Stanford University in 2018, O’Connell was the George Johnson Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. While there, she received the Distinguished Teaching Award (the campus’s most prestigious honor for teaching) in 2016 and Berkeley Law’s Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction in 2012. From April 2013 to July 2015, she served as associate dean for faculty development and research under three different deans. In 2013-2014, O’Connell was co-president of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (co-organizing the 2014 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies).

Before joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 2004, O’Connell clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court during the October 2003 term. From 2001 to 2003, she was a trial attorney for the Federal Programs Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division, receiving commendations for her work. She clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 2000 to 2001. A Truman Scholar, O’Connell worked for a number of federal agencies in earlier years, including the Department of Defense (Offices of the General Counsel and Inspector General), Federal Trade Commission (Bureau of Competition), Department of Justice (Office of Legal Counsel), and U.S. Army (RDE). She is a member of the New York bar and served as a volunteer for the Biden-Harris Campaign’s policy team.

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Thomas Berry

Director, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute

Biography

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Brian C. Johnson

Managing Director, Banking Supervision and Regulation Group, Patomak Global Partners

Biography

Brian Johnson is Managing Director in the Banking Supervision and Regulation Group at Patomak Global Partners.

In this role, Mr. Johnson spearheads projects related to the regulation of consumer financial products under Keith Noreika, Executive Vice President and Chairman of the Banking Supervision and Regulation Group and former acting Comptroller of the Currency.

Prior to joining Patomak, Mr. Johnson was a partner in Alston & Bird LLP’s financial services and products group. There, he advised financial institutions on consumer finance regulatory issues relating to product compliance, examination, enforcement investigations, and compliance management systems, and on strategic engagement with independent federal regulatory agencies and with Congress.

Mr. Johnson previously served as Deputy Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where he oversaw the agency’s rulemaking, supervision, and enforcement activities. He conceived and led the creation of high-profile agency initiatives, including the Office of Innovation, Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law, policy symposia series, and Start Small, Save Up emergency savings program. He also served as the CFPB representative to the Financial Stability Oversight Council Deputies’ Committee and advised on interagency matters involving the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

Mr. Johnson held various positions on Capitol Hill, including policy director and chief financial institutions counsel on the House Committee on Financial Services, where his portfolio covered consumer protection and credit, mortgage origination, credit reporting, banking, and data security. His efforts on the committee involved drafting legislation to provide regulatory relief to bank, credit union, and nondepository financial institutions, as well as conducting oversight of the activities of the CFPB, Financial Stability Oversight Council, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of Financial Research, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve System, and National Credit Union Administration.

Mr. Johnson received his juris doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law and his bachelor’s in economics from the University of Virginia.

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Thomas Berry

Director, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute

Biography

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Michael D. Pepson

Regulatory Counsel, Americans for Prosperity Foundation

Biography

Mike Pepson is regulatory counsel at Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which frequently files amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Courts of Appeals, and state Supreme Courts, as well as public comments in various federal and state regulatory proceedings. Mike assists AFPF with its efforts involving separation of powers, administrative process, criminal justice reform, tech and innovation, and other issues.

He is also Special Counsel for Administrative Law at Cause of Action Institute, where he has been involved in complex civil and criminal litigation in federal district and appellate courts and administrative litigation before federal agencies in a variety of matters, including agency enforcement actions, statutory and constitutional challenges to federal regulations and agency decisions, and Section 1983 challenges to state statutes.

He received his LL.M. from Columbia Law School, J.D. from The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and B.A. from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Eric J. Segall

Ashe Family Chair Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law

Biography

Eric J. Segall graduated from Emory University, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, and from Vanderbilt Law School, where he was the research editor for the Law Review and member of Order of the Coif. He clerked for the Chief Judge Charles Moye Jr. for the Northern District of Georgia, and Albert J. Henderson of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. After his clerkships, Segall worked for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and the U.S. Department of Justice, before joining the Georgia State faculty in 1991.

Segall teaches federal courts and constitutional law I and II. He is the author of the books Originalism as Faith and Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges. His articles on constitutional law have appeared in, among others, the Harvard Law Review Forum, the Stanford Law Review On Line, the UCLA Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, and Constitutional Commentary among many others.

Segall’s op-eds and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Atlantic, SLATE, Vox, Salon, and the Daily Beast, among others. He has appeared on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and France 24 and all four of Atlanta’s local television stations. He has also appeared on numerous local and national radio shows.

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Theodore Cooperstein

Appellate Counsel, Theodore Cooperstein PLLC

Biography

Theodore Cooperstein currently is an appellate attorney in the boutique law firm of Theodore Cooperstein PLLC, available for criminal and civil appeals in both state and federal courts. A former career prosecutor with twenty five years of service in the US Department of Justice, he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of Mississippi, and has served as a Military Intelligence Officer in the Army Reserves from 1989 to 2011, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. During the Trump Administration, he was appointed and served as the General Counsel of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Prior to joining the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Cooperstein served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. He previously had served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, and as Assistant General Counsel in the FBI Office of the General Counsel.

A.B., Dartmouth College; J.D., Stanford University; LL.M., Comparative and International Law, Georgetown University Law Center; Masters of Strategic Studies, U.S. Army War College

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