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.
Managing Director, Lexpat Global Services
Adam R. Pearlman is the Founder and Managing Director of Lexpat Global Services, an international law and consulting services firm specializing in security, defense, investigations, compliance, and training. A Special Advisor to and member of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group, he is National Security Law expert and a proven senior leader with more than fifteen years of experience across the U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, in the White House, and with the U.S. Federal Judiciary.
Most recently, he served as the Senior Advisor for Legal Policy in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, where he counseled senior officials on matters covering the entire spectrum of programs and operations to counter terrorism and violent extremism. While participating in sensitive diplomatic engagements and helping to coordinate military operations, he also advised in the development of sanctions policy and initiatives to build legal and operational capacity in partner nations. Mr. Pearlman also managed the Bureau’s participation in federal litigation and led U.S. delegations in multilateral forums concerning criminal justice and rule of law.
A former Associate Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Mr. Pearlman was agency counsel for complex civil and criminal national security matters in federal and military courts, and led the Supreme Court and appellate unit of the team dedicated to litigating classified counterterrorism cases. His earlier service in the Department of Justice spanned four litigating divisions and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. His diverse experience included reviewing complex international transactions and mergers, and advising on immigration removal proceedings, human rights abuses, and terrorist financing investigations. Mr. Pearlman also served with distinction in Iraq as an early advisor to the Iraqi High Tribunal’s prosecution of Saddam Hussein. He was a law clerk for The Honorable Royce C. Lamberth, and during law school interned in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Pearlman is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, a member of the American Bar Association’s Africa Law Initiative Council, and a member of the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues. He is a former National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, vice chairman of the ABA Section of International Law’s committees on national security, and aerospace and defense, and also previously served as a liaison to the Board of Directors of the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative. He has been co-editor of the U.S. Intelligence Community Law Sourcebook since 2011 and has published articles in the Harvard National Security Journal, Stanford Law & Policy Review, and Intelligence & National Security.
Mr. Pearlman earned his B.A., with honors, from UCLA, and his J.D., with honors, from The George Washington University Law School, where he was a member of the International Law Review. He also earned a Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence degree from the National Intelligence University, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Kornblum Award for national security law and ethics. Mr. Pearlman speaks and reads Portuguese at the intermediate level and holds certificates in international human rights law from the University of Oxford and in U.S. and international anti-corruption law from American University’s Washington College of Law. He is admitted to the State Bars of California and Virginia, as well as to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court.
Chair, Government Enforcement & Investigations Group, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC
Mr. Whitley represents clients nationally and internationally in white collar criminal matters and regulatory enforcement, corporate internal investigations, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and U.S. export controls and compliance. He also advises clients on corporate compliance, health care fraud and FDA-related matters.
Mr. Whitley has had a wide-ranging career in the Department of Justice (DOJ). During the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, he served as Acting Associate Attorney General, the third-ranking position at Main Justice. He was appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush, respectively, to serve as the U.S. Attorney in the Middle and Northern Federal Districts of Georgia. Throughout his career, Mr. Whitley served under five U.S. Attorneys General and four Presidents in a number of key operational and policy positions. Earlier in his career, Mr. Whitley served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit in Columbus, Georgia. Mr. Whitley maintains strong professional relationships with the state and federal law enforcement community.
In 2003, Mr. Whitley was appointed by President George W. Bush as the first General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the highest ranking legal official at DHS. He held that position for two years working for DHS Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, before returning to private practice.
Mr. Whitley leads a team of lawyers in the Firm's Government Enforcement and Investigations practice group who conduct sensitive high level investigations for both public and private sector institutions. Mr. Whitley's practice focuses on corporate defense and representation of clients in complex civil and criminal enforcement matters brought by the DOJ, other federal agencies, State Attorneys General and local prosecutors. He has represented numerous individuals and corporations in major government investigations throughout the United States and internationally. Mr. Whitley is a frequent speaker on white collar, compliance and corporate governance issues.
Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
Tung Yin joined the Lewis & Clark Law School faculty in 2009. Before that, he taught for seven years at The University of Iowa College of Law, where was most recently professor and Claire Ferguson Carlson Faculty Fellow; practiced law from 1998-2002 with Munger Tolles & Olson LLP in Los Angeles, where he specialized in white collar corporate criminal defense and employment law. He clerked for the late Hon. Edward Rafeedie, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the late Hon. William J. Holloway, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and the Hon. J. Clifford Wallace, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. While in law school at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a Notes and Comments Editor of the California Law Review and a member of the Moot Court Board.
Yin’s academic research focuses primarily on national security and terrorism law, and has ranged from legal issues arising out of indefinite military detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, to race and religion and the perception of terrorism, to drone terrorism, and more. His scholarship has been cited in judicial opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Ninth Circuits, the Florida and Georgia Supreme Courts, and other lower state and federal trial courts.
He frequently provides commentary for local and national media on high-profile criminal matters, including news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, The New York Daily News, Bloomberg News, The National Law Journal, The Oregonian, Bloomberg Radio, Oregon Public Broadcasting, KEX News, KXL News, KPAM News, “The Lars Larson Show,” “The Terry Boyd Show,” “The Mark and Dave Show,” and the local news affiliates for ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. He also writes about running for the Run Oregon blog.
Founder, President, and General Counsel, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty
Rick Esenberg is the founder and current President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a rapidly expanding law and policy organization headquartered in Milwaukee. Under Rick’s leadership, WILL has grown into one of the more active state-based think tanks and litigation centers in the country. Rick is a frequent litigator in state and federal courts and nationally recognized scholar and commentator on constitutional law, particularly the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. He is one of the leading experts on the Wisconsin Constitution and a frequent advocate before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Rick’s work seeks to advance the rule of law and individual liberty, formed by a robust civil society that forms individual and community character, preserving the wisdom of the past and an openness to the future.
Rick’s commentary has been featured in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Weekly Standard, Real Clear Politics, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Washington Examiner. Formerly on the faculty of Marquette University Law School, his scholarship has appeared in such publications as the Harvard Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Wake Forest Law Review and William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. Back when they were a thing, he operated a blog called Shark and Shepherd where he tried to suggest something about the duality of man – “the Jungian thing.”
Rick holds a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and a B.A., summa cum laude, in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition to service on the Marquette Faculty, he was formerly a litigation partner at Foley & Lardner and General Counsel of an international manufacturing firm headquartered in Wisconsin. He lives in Mequon Wisconsin with his wife Karen, golden retrievers Cooper and Riley and more books than he can find places for.
Managing Director, Lexpat Global Services
Adam R. Pearlman is the Founder and Managing Director of Lexpat Global Services, an international law and consulting services firm specializing in security, defense, investigations, compliance, and training. A Special Advisor to and member of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group, he is National Security Law expert and a proven senior leader with more than fifteen years of experience across the U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, in the White House, and with the U.S. Federal Judiciary.
Most recently, he served as the Senior Advisor for Legal Policy in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, where he counseled senior officials on matters covering the entire spectrum of programs and operations to counter terrorism and violent extremism. While participating in sensitive diplomatic engagements and helping to coordinate military operations, he also advised in the development of sanctions policy and initiatives to build legal and operational capacity in partner nations. Mr. Pearlman also managed the Bureau’s participation in federal litigation and led U.S. delegations in multilateral forums concerning criminal justice and rule of law.
A former Associate Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Mr. Pearlman was agency counsel for complex civil and criminal national security matters in federal and military courts, and led the Supreme Court and appellate unit of the team dedicated to litigating classified counterterrorism cases. His earlier service in the Department of Justice spanned four litigating divisions and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. His diverse experience included reviewing complex international transactions and mergers, and advising on immigration removal proceedings, human rights abuses, and terrorist financing investigations. Mr. Pearlman also served with distinction in Iraq as an early advisor to the Iraqi High Tribunal’s prosecution of Saddam Hussein. He was a law clerk for The Honorable Royce C. Lamberth, and during law school interned in the White House Counsel’s Office.
Mr. Pearlman is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, a member of the American Bar Association’s Africa Law Initiative Council, and a member of the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Project on Nuclear Issues. He is a former National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, vice chairman of the ABA Section of International Law’s committees on national security, and aerospace and defense, and also previously served as a liaison to the Board of Directors of the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative. He has been co-editor of the U.S. Intelligence Community Law Sourcebook since 2011 and has published articles in the Harvard National Security Journal, Stanford Law & Policy Review, and Intelligence & National Security.
Mr. Pearlman earned his B.A., with honors, from UCLA, and his J.D., with honors, from The George Washington University Law School, where he was a member of the International Law Review. He also earned a Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence degree from the National Intelligence University, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Kornblum Award for national security law and ethics. Mr. Pearlman speaks and reads Portuguese at the intermediate level and holds certificates in international human rights law from the University of Oxford and in U.S. and international anti-corruption law from American University’s Washington College of Law. He is admitted to the State Bars of California and Virginia, as well as to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court.
Chair, Government Enforcement & Investigations Group, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC
Mr. Whitley represents clients nationally and internationally in white collar criminal matters and regulatory enforcement, corporate internal investigations, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and U.S. export controls and compliance. He also advises clients on corporate compliance, health care fraud and FDA-related matters.
Mr. Whitley has had a wide-ranging career in the Department of Justice (DOJ). During the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, he served as Acting Associate Attorney General, the third-ranking position at Main Justice. He was appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush, respectively, to serve as the U.S. Attorney in the Middle and Northern Federal Districts of Georgia. Throughout his career, Mr. Whitley served under five U.S. Attorneys General and four Presidents in a number of key operational and policy positions. Earlier in his career, Mr. Whitley served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit in Columbus, Georgia. Mr. Whitley maintains strong professional relationships with the state and federal law enforcement community.
In 2003, Mr. Whitley was appointed by President George W. Bush as the first General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the highest ranking legal official at DHS. He held that position for two years working for DHS Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, before returning to private practice.
Mr. Whitley leads a team of lawyers in the Firm's Government Enforcement and Investigations practice group who conduct sensitive high level investigations for both public and private sector institutions. Mr. Whitley's practice focuses on corporate defense and representation of clients in complex civil and criminal enforcement matters brought by the DOJ, other federal agencies, State Attorneys General and local prosecutors. He has represented numerous individuals and corporations in major government investigations throughout the United States and internationally. Mr. Whitley is a frequent speaker on white collar, compliance and corporate governance issues.
Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
Tung Yin joined the Lewis & Clark Law School faculty in 2009. Before that, he taught for seven years at The University of Iowa College of Law, where was most recently professor and Claire Ferguson Carlson Faculty Fellow; practiced law from 1998-2002 with Munger Tolles & Olson LLP in Los Angeles, where he specialized in white collar corporate criminal defense and employment law. He clerked for the late Hon. Edward Rafeedie, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the late Hon. William J. Holloway, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and the Hon. J. Clifford Wallace, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. While in law school at the University of California, Berkeley, he was a Notes and Comments Editor of the California Law Review and a member of the Moot Court Board.
Yin’s academic research focuses primarily on national security and terrorism law, and has ranged from legal issues arising out of indefinite military detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, to race and religion and the perception of terrorism, to drone terrorism, and more. His scholarship has been cited in judicial opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Ninth Circuits, the Florida and Georgia Supreme Courts, and other lower state and federal trial courts.
He frequently provides commentary for local and national media on high-profile criminal matters, including news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, The New York Daily News, Bloomberg News, The National Law Journal, The Oregonian, Bloomberg Radio, Oregon Public Broadcasting, KEX News, KXL News, KPAM News, “The Lars Larson Show,” “The Terry Boyd Show,” “The Mark and Dave Show,” and the local news affiliates for ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. He also writes about running for the Run Oregon blog.
Chief Legal + Administrative Officer, Waystar Health
Matthew R. A. Heiman leads all legal and corporate governance matters for Waystar. Over the last two decades, he has worked in corporate and government sectors, gaining deep experience in the areas of corporate governance, litigation, risk management, security, and compliance.
Most recently, Matthew was Vice President, Corporate Secretary & Associate General Counsel at Johnson Controls where he helped establish a new corporate secretary department and led the integration of legal departments following the company’s merger with Tyco International. Prior to its merger with Johnson Controls, Matthew held a number of positions with Tyco International including Vice President, Chief Compliance & Audit Officer. Before Tyco, Matthew was a lawyer with the National Security Division at the U.S Department of Justice. He was a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq and practiced as a trial lawyer with the law firm of McGuireWoods.
Matthew holds a BA and JD from Indiana University and is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is a Senior Fellow at George Mason University’s National Security Institute.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Julian Sanchez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and studies issues at the busy intersection of technology, privacy, and civil liberties, with a particular focus on national security and intelligence surveillance. Before joining Cato, Sanchez served as the Washington editor for the technology news site Ars Technica, where he covered surveillance, intellectual property, and telecom policy. He has also worked as a writer for The Economist’s blog Democracy in America and as an editor for Reason magazine, where he remains a contributing editor.
Sanchez has written on privacy and technology for a wide array of national publications, ranging from the National Review to The Nation, and is a founding editor of the policy blog Just Security. He studied philosophy and political science at New York University.
Attorney & former Senior Policy Advisor, Department of Homeland Security
Faisal is a lawyer living in Vermont with his children. Faisal is a former Republican who served in the George W Bush Administration Senior Policy Advisor to the Under at the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to that, Faisal worked at the White House Office of Homeland Security and then later the Homeland Security Council as associate counsel. Prior to his appointment at the White House, Faisal served as the Deputy General Counsel for Policy at the Office of Personnel Management. Faisal Gill also served in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
He has a BA and JD from American University in Washington, DC.
It was reported that Faisal was one of the prominent Muslim Americans that NSA was spying on.
Senior Research Fellow in Anglo-American Relations, Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, The Heritage Foundation
Theodore "Ted" R. Bromund studies and writes on Anglo-American relations, U.S. and British relations with Europe and the European Union, America’s leadership role in the world, and international organizations and treaties as senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.
Bromund, who joined Heritage in 2008, previously served nine years as associate director of International Security Studies at Yale University, a center dedicated to the study and teaching of diplomatic history and grand strategy. He was a lecturer in history beginning in 1999, and in international affairs for the master of arts program beginning in 2004.
A columnist for Newsday, Forbes, and Great Britain’s Yorkshire Post, Bromund also writes regularly for National Review, The Weekly Standard, and FoxNews.com, and, in Britain, CapX. He has been interviewed or cited by BBC News, CBS News, Fox News Channel, CNN, Fox Business, Politifact, Radio Free Europe, The Christian Science Monitor, Time, and Financial Times, among others.
Besides contributing articles to scholarly journals, Bromund is the author of a chapter on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the book The Blair Legacy: Politics, Policy, Governance, and Foreign Affairs (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
In 2013, Bromund was recognized by the Second Amendment Foundation as its Scholar of the Year for his analysis of the Arms Trade Treaty.
Bromund received his doctorate in history in 1999 from Yale. His thesis on Britain’s first application to the European Economic Community won the Samuel H. Beer Dissertation Prize from the American Political Science Association’s British Politics Group. In 2016, he received Heritage’s Joseph Shattan Award in recognition of the quality of his writing.
He is an adjunct professor of strategic studies in the Strategic Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he teaches courses on grand strategy. He also holds two master’s degrees in history from Yale as well as a bachelor of arts degree from Iowa’s Grinnell College.
A native of Wooster, Ohio, he currently resides in Washington, D.C.
Partner, Grossman Young & Hammond
Sandra Grossman is a partner at Grossman Young & Hammond, LLC, located in Bethesda, Maryland. She is a skilled immigration litigator with over a decade of experience in all matters related to the practice of immigration law. She is known for providing top-notch, personalized service to both individual and corporate clients with complex immigration cases and highly specialized needs. Her pragmatic and creative approach to immigration challenges has earned her an international reputation as a lawyer who can get the job done for the most discriminating of clients.
Sandra has developed a unique practice that addresses complex inadmissibility issues, often involving matters before INTERPOL, high-profile clients, politically sensitive matters, and diplomatic issues with foreign policy implications, and requiring knowledge and expertise on a range of issues involving public international law and U.S. domestic law. Sandra is fiercely dedicated to guiding her clients through the complex maze of U.S. immigration laws in order to find workable solutions to achieve their goals.
Sandra has successfully represented individuals in diverse aspects of immigration law before the immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Federal District Courts. She also represents clients in the areas of deportation defense, detention and bond issues, the immigration consequences of criminal convictions, requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), waivers of inadmissibility, asylum, and adjustment of status and naturalization applications, among other matters. Her experience includes representation of clients in lawsuits to prompt U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) action on long-delayed applications, including applications for naturalization, adjustment of status, waivers, and replacement green cards.
The Washingtonian Magazine recognized Sandra as one of “Washington’s Top Lawyers.” She is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), a former adjunct professor in immigration law at the Washington College of Law at American University, and a member of the Editorial Board of Bender’s Immigration Bulletin. Sandra regularly handles pro-bono client matters and offers reduced rate services for such organizations as the Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition (MIRC), CASA de Maryland, Catholic Charities, and Identity.
Sandra is a native Spanish and English speaker and is conversant in French.
Head of Tech & Innovation, Centre for Policy Studies
Matthew Feeney is Head of Tech & Innovation at Centre for Policy Studies. Before joining CPS, Matthew was the director of Cato Institute’s Project on Emerging Technologies. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, City A.M., and others. He received both his BA and MA in philosophy from the University of Reading.
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Matthew R. A. Heiman, Julian Sanchez, Faisal Gill
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Note from the Editor: The Federalist Society takes no positions on particular legal and public...
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Recently, the Civil Rights Commission published a report titled “Are Rights a Reality? Evaluating Federal...
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Matthew Feeney
The long-standing “Border Search Exception” to the Fourth Amendment allows Customs and Border Protection to...