People

Taylor Brien Associate

London

Taylor works primarily on mergers and acquisitions and project finance in the renewable energy space. Taylor also has experience advising on joint ventures and project development.

Katie E. Briscoe Partner

Sacramento

Katie collaborates with employers to resolve challenging litigation and avoid risky compliance issues. She defends employers against PAGA, class, multi-plaintiff, and single plaintiff actions involving a variety of claims ranging from complex wage and hour disputes to contentious discrimination and harassment claims. Katie has jury trial experience and practices before a variety of forums, including state and federal trial courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and private arbitration and mediation. She understands the challenges that employers face and helps them to navigate ever-changing state, federal, and local laws. Katie has significant experience litigating and advising on wage and hour issues; exempt/non-exempt classification; discrimination, harassment, and retaliation; arbitration agreements; independent contractor classification; business expense reimbursement; compensation; Section 17200, and more. She also works with clients to resolve employment disputes prior to litigation.

Katie earned her J.D. from the University of California, Davis School of Law, where she graduated Order of the Coif.

Marley Brison Career Associate

Wheeling, W.V. (GOIC)

Marley focuses primarily on domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance issues, restructurings, private equity transactions, and advising on general corporate matters.

Marley also concentrates her practice on matters pertaining to private equity and alternative investment funds, representing both institutional investors and fund sponsors. On the sponsor side, Marley handles various aspects of fund formation, including communicating with investors, preparing regulatory analyses of investors, drafting fund documents, and preparing regulatory filings.

Marley was a Summer Associate with Orrick in 2016. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, cum laude, where she was the Lead Executive Editor of the University of Pittsburgh Law Review. She received her undergraduate degree from Ohio University, summa cum laude, in Journalism/Pre-Law.

Prior to joining Orrick, Marley served as a judicial intern to the Honorable David Cercone of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Additionally, Marley worked as a Legal Associate at rue21, inc., focusing on real estate and general corporate matters.

Emily Brodkin Managing Associate

Boston

Providing counsel focused on both preventing and solving problems, she has represented established and emerging digital health companies, hospitals, health systems, and pharmaceutical and device manufacturers. Emily’s experience includes involvement in fraud and abuse issues, data privacy, telehealth, and scope of practice matters.

Craig Bruce Senior Associate

London

Craig has a wide range of experience advising developers, funders and contractors on the construction and operation aspects of domestic and international energy projects including wind (offshore and onshore), solar, battery storage, energy from waste, anaerobic digestion and nuclear.

Jeremiah Buckley Partner

Washington, D.C.

Jerry is a thought leader in the field of financial services regulation. He co-hosts RegFi, a weekly podcast series, that explores how financial regulation will change more in the next 10 years than in the last 50: https://www.orrick.com/en/Podcasts/RegFi.

Early in his career, Jerry served as Minority Staff Director of the United States Senate Banking Committee, and he played an important role in drafting many of the laws that impact the consumer financial services industry today. Since entering private practice, he has guided clients in developing compliance programs, dealing with regulatory and enforcement challenges and helping shape public policy.

Throughout his career, he has focused on promoting enhanced delivery of financial services. He was a leader in advocating the passage of the federal ESign Act, which authorized use of electronic records in financial services and other transactions. He served as counsel to the Drafting Committee for Standards and Procedures for Electronic Records and Signatures (SPeRS). He co-authored The Law of Electronic Records and Signatures (West Publishing Company) as well as Introduction to Mortgage Banking (American Bankers Association).

He has also taken a lead in promoting national data protection standards. His American Banker article, “Congress needs to hurry up on data protection,” lays out the case for national standards as an alternative to a patchwork of state privacy laws. He serves as advisor to the Financial Services Trade Associations Data Protection Working Group, an informal alliance of national financial trade associations responding to fast changing legislative and regulatory developments related to privacy and data security. He is also an advisor to the Association for Data and Cyber Governance (ADCG) and the Alliance for Innovation in Regulation (AIR).

His clients include banks, mortgage companies, credit card issuers, insurance companies, broker dealers, fintech companies, investment banks and private equity investors. Jerry provides strategic counsel and advice on business formations and acquisitions, licensing and chartering, risk management and enforcement matters involving federal and state regulators.

He has defended companies that are targets of inquiries or enforcement actions by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Federal Reserve, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Congressional Committees and state attorneys general.

Jerry has promoted a modernized approach to financial regulation (regtech). He led Buckley LLP's effort to publish a widely read white paper titled “Financial Regulators’ Dilemma: Administrative and Regulatory Hurdles to Innovation.” The paper is based on interviews with Heads of Innovation at the principle financial agency regulators, and lays out legal and administrative stumbling blocks identified by regulators themselves impeding regtech advances.

Jerry's opinion pieces regularly appear in financial service publications. He has advocated for development of “dynamic disclosures” to offer more useful information to consumers than is provided under the often cumbersome and voluminous static disclosures currently provided.

An article he wrote in the American Banker in 2016, “The Compliance Officer Bill of Rights,” focused attention on the growing risks faced by compliance officers. This led to a symposium on “Rights and Responsibilities of Today’s Chief Compliance Officers — Their Evolving Role,” which was chaired by Jerry and sponsored by American University Washington College of Law. Chief compliance officers from the nation’s leading companies participated in this seminal discussion about how to define and make safe the job of a chief compliance officer.

He has acted as counsel for a number of national financial services trade associations on matters before regulatory agencies and Congress, and in filing amicus briefs related to the interpretation of banking and consumer finance laws in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and appellate courts.

He is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at American University's Washington College of Law. In 2007, he founded a national financial services consulting company known as Treliant Risk Advisors.

In 2015 he was awarded the Senator William Proxmire Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers.

Alexander Bulkin Managing Associate

Los Angeles

Alex represents project sponsors, developers, and private equity investors on a wide range of transactions in the energy and infrastructure sectors with a particular focus on renewable energy matters. He regularly advises clients on the development, construction, operation, purchase and disposition of solar, battery storage, wind, biomass, waste-to-energy, and other renewable energy projects.

Alex’s experience encompasses the full range of agreements for projects, including those related to engineering, procurement and construction; equipment supply; operations and maintenance; asset management; long-term services; off-take; interconnection; mergers and acquisitions; and public-private partnerships.

James E. Burns Jr. Senior Counsel

San Francisco

Jim conducts internal investigations for clients and represents them in regulatory investigations and proceedings before the SEC and state securities regulatory authorities. He has broad experience in jury and bench trial matters before federal, tax and state courts. He has handled numerous class actions and litigated multi-district cases involving claims under RICO and federal and state securities law, as well as professional services malpractice claims and various business torts.

Jim has extensive experience in commercial arbitrations before various arbitration and mediation tribunals, including the American Arbitration Association, the New York Stock Exchange, the National Association of Securities Dealers and privately chosen arbitrators. He acts on behalf of technology companies, venture capitalists, securities issuers, directors, brokers, underwriters, promoters and mutual funds.

Jim has represented Retek, Inc., Touch America Holdings, Inc., RS Investment Management, Inc., Cygnus, Inc., Everen Securities Inc., Chiron Corp., Intevac, Inc., Accel Partners, TA Associates, Kenetech, Pope & Talbot, Citrix Systems, Inc., Everex and The Photonics Fund.

Prior to joining Orrick, Jim was a partner and West Coast Managing Partner at Clifford Chance, a partner and managing partner at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and a partner at Chickering & Gregory.

Alexandra Bursak Senior Associate

New York

Alex's litigation work spans a range of subject areas, from copyright and patent law to questions of statutory interpretation and constitutional law. She has been the lead drafter of briefs and motions in federal and state courts of appeals and contributed to teams working in the U.S. Supreme Court and state and federal courts of all levels.

Alex maintains an active pro bono practice. Her scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. Before joining Orrick, she served as a law clerk to Judge Anthony Scirica of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Judge Cornelia Pillard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She received her law degree from New York University School of Law.

Preston Burton Partner

Washington, D.C.

Over the course of his career, Preston has tried more than 50 criminal cases to verdict, representing individual and corporate clients in complex federal white collar criminal cases, governmental and civil proceedings and congressional and internal investigations. He also has handled more than 10 appeals before the D.C. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit and Fourth Circuit.

His work is punctuated by numerous front-page cases, representing such high-profile clients as Monica Lewinsky, former CIA intelligence agent Aldrich H. Ames and former FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen. He has represented business executives and companies in areas such as public corruption investigations, criminal antitrust matters, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and export control violations, False Claims Act (FCA) cases and procurement fraud. Many of his cases have involved cross-border investigations, including extradition requests and multi-jurisdictional enforcement actions. He has also handled congressional investigations, as well as numerous matters involving national security issues, including the representation of several intelligence agency officials and serving most recently as an amicus appointed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Since 2010, Preston has been ranked as a leading lawyer in White Collar Crime & Government Investigations by Chambers USA, which noted, “He is renowned throughout the legal community as someone with great trial skills and a great strategic sense." He has also been recognized for Corporate Investigations and White Collar Criminal Defense by Legal 500, which noted that he “has a formidable reputation for individual representations and is known for strategic thinking and willingness to try cases.” Benchmark Litigation 2019 named him as a top practitioner in White Collar and Securities Litigation.

Before joining Orrick, Preston was a partner at Buckley LLP and a member of the firm’s partner board. He joined Buckley from Poe & Burton PLLC, a boutique litigation firm he co-founded in 2011. Prior to that, he led the litigation practice of Orrick’s Washington, D.C. office. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Boyce F. Martin Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.

Whitney Busch Alcorn Associate

Washington, D.C.

Whitney advises clients on a variety of litigation, enforcement, and regulatory matters.

Ian Busche Managing Associate

New York

Ian represents governmental issuers, banking institutions, and non-profit organizations across a wide range of public finance sectors.  He has served as bond counsel, underwriter’s counsel, disclosure counsel or borrower’s counsel for financings on behalf of colleges and universities, public power agencies, and housing and infrastructure projects, all benefiting communities across the State of New York and around the country.

Prior to joining Orrick, Ian practiced at another nationally recognized public finance firm handling financings for single-family and multifamily housing, as well as tobacco revenue securitization.