For more than three decades, Jay P. Lefkowitz practiced at the highest levels of American law as a senior litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis in New York, where he served on the firm's Worldwide Management Committee before retiring from the firm in 2026. His courtroom work spanned securities, antitrust, intellectual property, product liability, FDA and life sciences litigation, and white-collar defense.

 

He is best known for two landmark 5–4 victories before the United States Supreme Court. In PLIVA v. Mensing (2011), and again in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett (2013), he persuaded the Court that federal law preempts state failure-to-warn and design-defect claims against generic drug manufacturers — decisions that reshaped pharmaceutical liability law nationwide.

 

The National Law Journal named him one of "The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America," and Law360 recognized him as an MVP of the Year six times.

 

His career has been distinguished by an unusual combination of private practice and public service. He served under two presidents — as Director of Cabinet Affairs and Deputy Executive Secretary to the Domestic Policy Council for President George H.W. Bush, and as General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under President George W. Bush.

 

From 2005 to 2009, he served as the first U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights, appointed pursuant to the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, where he pressed the cause of one of the world's most persecuted populations on the international stage.

 

A graduate of Columbia College (A.B., History, 1984) and Columbia Law School (J.D., 1987), he has remained closely tied to his alma mater, teaching a Columbia Law School seminar in which students simulate the work of Supreme Court justices on pending cases. He serves on the boards of the Tikvah Fund, Commentary magazine, the Manhattan Institute, and Columbia/Barnard Hillel.

 

Beyond the courtroom, he is a prolific essayist whose writing on law, politics, religion, and public life has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and Commentary, where he has been a contributor for more than three decades. And — as chronicled in the award-winning documentary Looking Up — he has twice climbed El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.