Reforming Criminal Justice

I have been a lawyer for 28 years after graduating first in my class at the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1996. At the outset of my legal career, I spent two years in Washington, DC serving as a law clerk for a federal court of appeals judge and then to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist at the US Supreme Court.

In the years that followed, I've worked both as a federal prosecutor (9 years) and as a criminal defense attorney (13 years). I've handled virtually every type of criminal case you can think of, including capital murder, securities fraud, drug trafficking, firearms violations, child pornography, mortgage fraud, voter fraud, and public corruption. Over the years, I have tried more than two dozen cases across the country both as a prosecutor and defense attorney. I am currently a partner in the Washington, DC office of one of the world's largest law firms. I also teach Legal Ethics at Duke Law School.

During my years in private law practice, I have contributed a significant amount of my time to pro bono work, largely focused on religious liberty cases and criminal cases. I recently argued a criminal case in the Alabama Supreme Court. In 2020, I represented numerous churches in litigation challenging COVID church closure orders.

Along the way, I attended seminary part-time at Dallas Theological Seminary, graduating first in my class with a master's degree in biblical studies in 2010. I’m currently pursuing a Th.M. in theological ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

I live in northern Virginia with my wife of 30 years and our youngest son. My two older children graduated from Furman University. We are members of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.