Professional Timeline

1984: B.A. in History, Columbia College; James A. Beard Political Science Prize; Supreme Court internship program

1987: J.D., Columbia Law School; Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar

1980s to early 1990s: active in the Soviet Jewry movement, including travel to the Soviet Union to meet refuseniks

1989 to 1993: Deputy Executive Secretary of the Domestic Policy Council, then Director of Cabinet Affairs, White House of President George H.W. Bush; 1990 public member of the U.S. delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva

1993: joins Kirkland & Ellis after a stint at the American Enterprise Institute

1998: argues Jackson v. Benson before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, upholding the Milwaukee school voucher program

2001 to 2003: General Counsel, Office of Management and Budget, then Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy; architect of the 2001 stem-cell funding policy and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

2004: represents the United States at the OSCE conference on anti-Semitism in Berlin

August 2005 to January 2009: first U.S. Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea

May 2008: honorary delegation to Jerusalem for Israel’s 60th anniversary

2011: wins PLIVA v. Mensing at the Supreme Court; Law360 MVP (Appellate)

2012: American Lawyer Lawyer of the Week (December)

2013: wins Mutual Pharmaceutical v. Bartlett; National Law Journal 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America

2013 to 2014: pro bono defence of the Williamsburg storekeepers

2014: Corber v. Xanodyne, Ninth Circuit en banc, for Teva

2015 to 2016: McCall v. Scott, Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program; dismissal 2015, affirmed 2016

2018: Association for Accessible Medicines v. Frosh, Fourth Circuit; New York appellate court allows the Davids teacher-tenure case to proceed

2019: Judge Joseph M. Proskauer Award, UJA-Federation of New York

March 2026: retires from Kirkland & Ellis after more than three decades