Reforming Criminal Justice

I have been a lawyer for nearly 27 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 (11 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.

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.

In 2021, I signed a contract with Crossway to publish a book on a topic that has long been of interest to me: how Christians should think about criminal justice. Friends had encouraged me over the years to write this book, but the murder of George Floyd served as the catalyst for me to finally put pen to paper. Lord willing, the book will be released in late 2023. The book's title is the title of this website -- Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal.

I currently live in northern Virginia with my wife of nearly 29 years and our youngest son. My two older children are in college at Furman University. We are members of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.