Chairman, The Ashcroft Law Firm LLC, and former United States Attorney General
Former U.S. Attorney General, Governor and U.S. Senator John Ashcroft serves as the firm’s founder and chairman. As Attorney General, and the U.S. Justice Department’s CEO, Mr. Ashcroft led the world’s largest and foremost international law firm and law enforcement agency—an organization larger than most Fortune 500 companies, with over 122,000 employees. Mr. Ashcroft integrated strategic planning, budgeting, and performance measures, which resulted in the DOJ earning a clean audit for the first time in its history.
Mr. Ashcroft boldly led the Department of Justice through the transformational period after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He subsequently reorganized the Department to focus on its number one priority: preventing terrorism. The tough antiterrorism campaign he directed helped keep America safe throughout his tenure and resulted in the dismantling of terrorist cells across America and the disruption of over 150 terrorist plots worldwide.
Within two months of the attacks, and with financial markets still reeling, the unprecedented corporate scandals at ENRON, WorldCom and dozens more unfolded, further destabilizing the weakened economy. John Ashcroft was called upon to restore America’s faith in the integrity of our marketplace. He marshaled the resources of the federal government to bring to justice those guilty of massive corporate fraud. At all times, he demanded that cases be brought swiftly, with appropriate serious penalties—always taking into account the best interests of the employees and shareholders whose lives were most directly affected.
From 1985 to 1993, as Governor of Missouri, Ashcroft balanced eight consecutive budgets, built a $120 million budget surplus and established a $190 million operating reserve. His management and fiscal integrity helped generate 338,000 new jobs state-wide, a triple-A bond rating from the three major Wall Street rating agencies, a per capita state and local tax burden ranked 49th in the United States and a 12 percent increase in personal income. His new education performance standards led Fortune magazine to name him as one of the nation’s top ten Education Governors. In 1991, the non-partisan National Governors Association voted him Chairman.
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994, he brought his management skills to Washington where he authored budget rules protecting Social Security and Medicare and helped balance the federal budget for the first time in decades. As a member of the Senate Judiciary, Foreign Relations and Commerce Committees, he worked to reform laws regulating the banking, telecommunications, aviation, transportation and information technology industries.
In 1973, Mr. Ashcroft served as Missouri Auditor, followed by two terms as Missouri Attorney General. He was raised in Springfield, Missouri, received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago.
Founding Partner, PNT Law Firm
Austin R. Nimocks has litigated in state and federal courts across the country. Mr. Nimocks focuses his practice on civil litigation (plaintiff and defense), commercial litigation, corporate matters, federal compliance, internal investigations, government relations, white-collar criminal defense, and religious freedom.
Litigating for over 25 years, including three as a public defender, Mr. Nimocks has practiced law within the private, government, and non-profit sectors, geographically spanning the United States and beyond.
Prior to starting the PNT Law Firm (www.pntlawfirm.com), Mr. Nimocks worked for former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in the Ashcroft Law Firm in Austin, Texas. For General Ashcroft, Mr. Nimocks litigated cases against all levels of government (federal, state, and local).
Prior to joining General Ashcroft, Mr. Nimocks served in the Executive Administration of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as both Special Counsel and the Associate Deputy Attorney General for Special Litigation. During his time with General Paxton, Mr. Nimocks coordinated and led myriad multi-state lawsuits and strategic litigation against the federal government, other states, and local government entities. On behalf of Texas (and other states), Mr. Nimocks’ teams achieved many victories against the federal government, including the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and other federal agencies
Before joining the Texas Attorney General’s Office, Mr. Nimocks served as Senior Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (“ADF”) in Washington, D.C. While at ADF, Mr. Nimocks handled appeals and litigated constitutional cases in state and federal courts across the country, including matters regarding marriage, parental rights, voters’ rights, and religious freedom. Mr. Nimocks also authored several pieces of legislation and policy memoranda and testified before numerous state legislatures, as well as Congress. While with ADF, Mr. Nimocks made regular public appearances, speaking at numerous events and participating in hundreds of television, radio, and newspaper interviews with all major national media outlets.
Mr. Nimocks began practicing law on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In addition to his time spent as a public defender, Mr. Nimocks’ law practice in Mississippi was extremely diverse, involving personal injury, commercial litigation, appellate, contracts, real estate, administrative law, bankruptcy, libel & defamation, insurance defense, general civil litigation, and other matters.
In addition to his state bar admissions (TX, DC, MI, AZ, AL, MS), Mr. Nimocks is admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the D.C., First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits, as well as numerous federal district courts.
Mr. Nimocks is a native Texan, born and raised in the Fort Worth area. Mr. Nimocks resides and attends church in Dripping Springs, Texas, along with his wife and three daughters.
Partner, Troutman Pepper Locke
Lu is a former senior U.S. government official with a wealth of experience advising U.S. and international clients with complex regulatory and enforcement challenges. He has extensive experience representing clients facing state or federal government investigations and enforcement actions, conducting internal investigations, and advising corporate clients on regulatory compliance practices and in crisis response scenarios. As an accomplished legal strategist, Lu provides counsel to CEOs, CLO’s, and other executives, as well as boards of directors across various industries on a myriad of complex issues.
Lu’s clients benefit from his decades of experience providing strategic advice to top-tier government leaders, including the President of the United States and multiple United States Attorneys General. His career is marked by significant roles in federal and state government.
As Deputy Assistant to President George W. Bush, he was a chief advisor to the President and a member of the White House Senior Staff. In that role he provided strategic and human capital related policy advice directly to the President regarding all legal, national security, and international affairs, and presidential appointments administration-wide.
As Deputy Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, he served as Chief of Staff to the Associate Attorney General and had oversight of litigation emanating from the Tax, Civil Rights, Civil, and Community Relations Service Divisions of the agency. At the Department, he also previously served as Counselor to the Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, and as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, the division responsible for representing the U.S. in all constitutional challenges to U.S. law and defending the U.S. on all torts, federal programs, and immigration-related litigation.
Prior to joining private practice, Lu also served as the General Counsel for the federal law enforcement agency charged with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse of the $50+ billion appropriated for the reconstruction of Iraq where he oversaw several federal fraud prosecutions in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Frauds Section.
Earlier in his career, Lu served as an Assistant Attorney General and Trial Attorney for the Office of the Texas Attorney General, where he handled a robust civil litigation practice at the trial and appellate levels in both state and federal court.
William D. Warren Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law
Stephen Bainbridge is the William D. Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law, where he currently teaches Business Associations, Advanced Corporation Law, and Mergers and Acquisitions. In past years, he has also taught Corporate Finance, Securities Regulation, Unincorporated Business Associations and Catholic Social Thought and the Law. Professor Bainbridge previously taught at the University of Illinois Law School (1988-1996). He has also taught at Harvard Law School as the Joseph Flom Visiting Professor of Law and Business (2000-2001), and as a visiting professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne (2005 and 2007) and at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo (1999).
In 2008, Bainbridge received the UCLA School of Law's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1990, the graduating class of the University of Illinois College of Law voted him "Professor of the Year."
Professor Bainbridge is a prolific scholar, whose work covers a variety of subjects, but with a strong emphasis on the law and economics of public corporations. He has written over 100 law review articles which have appeared in such leading journals as the Harvard Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Bainbridge has also written 19 books, including seven in multiple editions. His most recent books include: Outsourcing the Board: How Board Service Providers Can Improve Corporate Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2018) (with M. Todd Henderson); Business Associations: Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, and Corporations (Foundation Press, 10th ed., 2018) (with Klein and Ramseyer); Mergers and Acquisitions: A Transactional Perspective (Foundation Press, 2017) (with Iman Anabtawi).
According to Gregory Sisk and Brian Leiter’s rankings of law professors by scholarly impact, Professor Bainbridge was the third most-frequently cited scholar in corporate and securities law for the period 2013-2017. According to Hein Online, Bainbridge is the 29th most frequently cited scholar in their database of legal publications over the last 10 years and the 23rd most cited for the period January 2018 through August 2019. In SSRN.com’s ranking of the top 3000 legal authors by all-time downloads, Bainbridge is ranked 10th. By that metric, he is the highest ranked member of the UCLA law school faculty. In SSRN.com’s ranking of the top 3000 legal authors by all-time citations to their work, Bainbridge is ranked 55th. By that metric, he is the second highest ranked member of the UCLA law school faculty.
Professor Bainbridge has been a Salvatori Fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a member of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Corporate Laws, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Markets and Morality, and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society’s Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group.
In May 2014, Professor Bainbridge was the Cameron Fellow at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law. He was the Francis G. Pileggi Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Widener University School of Law in September 2005, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Maryland School of Law in November 2005.
In 2008, 2011, and 2012, Professor Bainbridge was named by the National Association of Corporate Directors' Directorship magazine to its list of the 100 most influential people in the field of corporate governance.
His blog, ProfessorBainbridge.com, was named by the ABA Journal as one of the Top 100 Law Blogs of 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012.
Burton Craige Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Banking and Finance, University of North Carolina School of Law
Lissa Broome is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor, director of the school’s Center for Banking and Finance, faculty adviser to the North Carolina Banking Institute journal, and head of the school’s Director Diversity Initiative, which works to increase the gender, racial, and ethnic diversity on corporate boards of directors. Broome also serves as the University’s Faculty Athletics Representative to the Atlantic Coast Conference and the NCAA. She joined the faculty in 1984. Broome served as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1993 to 1995. She teaches Banking Law and Secured Transactions and writes in those areas and on corporate board diversity. Broome co-authored Regulation of Bank Financial Service Activities, with Jerry Markham, and its accompanying statutory supplement, with the 5th edition published in 2018. She also co-authored Securitization, Structured Finance and Capital Markets (LexisNexis 2004) with Steven L. Schwarcz and Bruce A. Markell. Broome received the McCall Award for Teaching Excellence in 1986, 1992, 1995, and 1998. In 2009, she was inducted into the newly-created McCall Master Teachers’ Society for Teaching Excellence. She was honored with the law school’s Outstanding Service Award in 2010 and received the Law Alumni Association’s S. Elizabeth Gibson Award for Faculty Excellence in 2019. Broome is a member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Commercial Finance lawyers, and the International Women’s Forum Carolinas.
Broome majored in finance at the University of Illinois and earned a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, she clerked for Judge Alvin B. Rubin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She practice law at King & Spalding in Atlanta before joining the UNC Law faculty.
Dane Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Jesse M. Fried is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Before joining the Harvard faculty in 2009, Fried was a Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy (BCLBE) at the University of California Berkeley. Fried has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University Law School, Duisenberg School of Finance, Hebrew University, IDC Herzilya, and Tel Aviv University. He holds an A.B. and A.M in Economics from Harvard University, and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. His well-known book Pay without Performance: the Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation, co-authored with Lucian Bebchuk, has been widely acclaimed by both academics and practitioners and translated into Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Italian. Fried has served as a consultant and expert witness in litigation involving executive compensation and corporate governance issues. He also serves on the Research Advisory Council of proxy advisor Glass, Lewis & Co.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
James C. Ho is a Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Before taking the bench on January 4, 2018, he was a partner and co-chair of the national Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
As an appellate litigator for over a decade, including three years as the Solicitor General of Texas, Judge Ho presented 50 oral arguments in federal and state courts nationwide. He won numerous appeals, including three merits cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. He was routinely ranked among the nation’s leading lawyers by Benchmark, Chambers, Law360, The Legal 500, and The National Law Journal, among other publications. His work has been cited favorably by courts at every level of both the federal and state judiciaries. He won a Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for every year that he served as solicitor general, and he is the only state solicitor general in history to be invited by the U.S. Supreme Court to express the views of a state.
Judge Ho has served in all three branches of the federal government. On the Senate Judiciary Committee, he served as chief counsel of the Subcommittees on the Constitution and Immigration under Senator John Cornyn. At the Justice Department, he served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and an attorney-advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel. He clerked for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.
His record of public service also includes appointments as vice chair of the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee in Texas and co-chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Judiciary Committee, and as a member of the U.S. Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Northern District of Texas, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the Continuity of Government Commission.
In addition, Judge Ho has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he taught seminars on U.S. Supreme Court Litigation and Religious Liberty. He has authored numerous articles in respected law reviews nationwide, including an annual feature on exemplary judicial writing for The Green Bag Almanac & Reader. He previously served as senior editor of The Green Bag and as co-editor of Pub. L. Misc.
Judge Ho graduated from Stanford University with honors and a B.A. in Public Policy in 1995, and the University of Chicago Law School with high honors in 1999. Before law school, he was a legislative aide to California State Senator Quentin Kopp. He and his wife Allyson live in Dallas, Texas, with their twin daughter and son.
Harold F. McNiece Professor of Law, St. John's University School of Law
Cheryl L. Wade is the "Dean Harold F. McNiece" Professor of Law at St. John's University School of Law. She teaches Issues of Race, Gender and Law, Business Organizations, Corporate Governance and Accountability, and Race and Business. Her book, "Predatory Lending and The Destruction of the African American Dream” was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2020 and was coauthored with Dr. Janis Sarra, Professor of Law, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. Professor Wade is a member of the American Law Institute, a national organization of prominent judges, lawyers and academics who work to clarify, modernize and reform the law.
Professor Wade has written book chapters and law review articles on securities, education law and the intersection of race and business. She has been invited to present at and write for many symposia including articles published by Boston University Law Review, Tulane Law Review, The Maryland Law Review, The Washington & Lee Law Review, and The Iowa Journal of Gender, Race & Justice. Her articles have been cited in several leading law reviews. One of her articles on education law, When Judges Are Gatekeepers: Democracy, Morality, Status and Empathy in Duty Decisions (Help From Ordinary Citizens) was listed in The National Law Journal's Worth Reading Column. Another article, Corporate Governance as Corporate Social Responsibility: Empathy and Race Discrimination, was excerpted in a text entitled “Corporate Governance: Law, Theory and Policy. Her article, Transforming Discriminatory Corporate Cultures: This is Not Just Women’s Work was listed on the Social Science Research Network’s Top Ten Download List for Diversity Studies.
Professor Wade has been invited to present at many university conferences and workshops on issues of corporate and civil rights law including the UCLA School of Law Critical Race Theory Workshop, the Theory and Practice of Business Decision Making At Boston College School of Law, Boston University’s conference on “The Role of Fiduciary Law and Trust in the Twenty-First Century” and the Western New England School of Law Clason Speaker Series. Professor Wade was chosen among several applicants to participate in the "Corporate Citizens in Corporate Cultures: Restructuring and Reform" workshop sponsored by the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at Cornell Law School. She delivered the keynote address at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law Symposium on Shareholder Activism.
Trial Attorney, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice (incoming)
Adam Griffin is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law. During law school, he served as a research assistant to Professor Stephen E. Sachs and UNC Law Dean Martin Brinkley. After law school, he spent two years litigating for liberty at the Institute for Justice as an inaugural Law and Liberty Fellow. He served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Richard E. Myers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and is now a separation-of-powers attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation.
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.
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County
George R. La Noue is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He has served as a trial expert in twenty cases involving public procurement preferences. For thirty years, he was Director of the Project on Civil Rights and Public Contracts at UMBC which recently contributed 289 public contracting disparity studies to the Library of Congress. He has been a consultant to nine governments and trial expert in thirty cases where the validity of disparity studies was at issue.
Prof. La Noue can be reached by email at glanoue@umbc.edu.
Dean and Associate Professor of Law, Faulkner University, Jones School of Law
Professor Campbell joined the faculty in 2007. He graduated from Auburn University in 1988 with a degree in International Business and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1993. Following a judicial clerkship for the Hon. Emmett R. Cox on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Professor Campbell entered private practice in Montgomery and Birmingham.
In 2000, Professor Campbell became an Assistant Attorney General in the Alabama Attorney General’s office, where his practice focused on constitutional law and civil rights, with an emphasis on the First, Eleventh, and Fourteenth Amendments, state immunity, election law, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In Spring 2002, he was a National Association of Attorneys General Supreme Court Fellow. In 2006, Professor Campbell became Deputy Chief Counsel to United States Senator Jeff Sessions, Chairman, and then Ranking Member, of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. His responsibilities included legislative analysis, drafting, and negotiations, management of hearings, and review of judicial nominations.
Professor Campbell teaches federal and Alabama civil procedure. In addition, he serves as President of the Board of Directors of Health Talents International, Inc., a nonprofit medical missions agency operating in Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Dean and Associate Professor of Law, Faulkner University, Jones School of Law
Professor Campbell joined the faculty in 2007. He graduated from Auburn University in 1988 with a degree in International Business and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1993. Following a judicial clerkship for the Hon. Emmett R. Cox on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Professor Campbell entered private practice in Montgomery and Birmingham.
In 2000, Professor Campbell became an Assistant Attorney General in the Alabama Attorney General’s office, where his practice focused on constitutional law and civil rights, with an emphasis on the First, Eleventh, and Fourteenth Amendments, state immunity, election law, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In Spring 2002, he was a National Association of Attorneys General Supreme Court Fellow. In 2006, Professor Campbell became Deputy Chief Counsel to United States Senator Jeff Sessions, Chairman, and then Ranking Member, of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. His responsibilities included legislative analysis, drafting, and negotiations, management of hearings, and review of judicial nominations.
Professor Campbell teaches federal and Alabama civil procedure. In addition, he serves as President of the Board of Directors of Health Talents International, Inc., a nonprofit medical missions agency operating in Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Fourth Annual Gregory S. Coleman Memorial Lecture & Luncheon
Seventh Annual Texas Chapters Conference
Dallas, TXBoard Diversity Requirements: California, Nasdaq, and More
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