People

Jesse Beringer Senior Associate

Washington, D.C.

Jesse routinely handles all aspects of civil and class action litigation, including arbitration and trial. She applies her knowledge of the federal rules and the discovery process to litigation matters across a wide array of industries—including technology, energy, and healthcare—from the outset to think strategically and pragmatically with clients about how to obtain the best result in each circumstance.

Recently, Jesse was the lead associate on the trial team in client Zillow Group, Inc.’s successful defense against false advertising litigation in the Western District of Washington, REX—Real Estate Exchange, Inc. v. Zillow Group Inc., where the jury delivered a full defense verdict.

Jesse also has substantial experience concerning mergers and acquisitions and competition-related investigations before the DOJ and FTC, including compliance with onerous Second Request merger investigations.

Prior to joining Orrick, Jesse was a litigation associate in the Washington, DC office of another international law firm.

Upnit K. Bhatti Senior Associate

Washington, D.C.

Upnit has served as litigation, trial, and appellate counsel for pharmaceutical, chemical, technology, cosmetics, and manufacturing companies. As a member of trial teams, she works on complex commercial matters to develop creative legal strategies for trial and subsequent appeals. As embedded counsel, Upnit takes the lead in drafting dispositive motions and pre- and post-trial filings and ensures that appellate issues are preserved. She has presented oral argument in state and federal courts and has co-authored countless briefs before state and federal trial and appellate courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition, Upnit maintains an active pro bono practice.

Prior to joining Orrick, Upnit focused on products liability and complex litigation work at Arnold & Porter LLP and a mid-size firm in Upstate New York. This included representing a consumer products company in the defense of thousands of personal injury cases in state and federal courts. She was the primary drafter of several motions and appellate briefs. She was also deeply involved in the firms’ pro bono practices and first chaired a trial dealing with First and Eighth Amendment claims.

Outside of the firm, Upnit serves on the Board of Directors of the DC Women’s Bar Association and serves as its Advocacy Committee Co-Chair. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of her law school’s Alumni Association.

Upnit previously clerked for the Honorable Theodore A. McKee of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and interned for the Honorable Thérèse Wiley Dancks of the Northern District of New York. In law school, Upnit served as the Managing Editor of the Syracuse Law Review, and was an arguing member of the American Bar Association’s National Appellate Team. She received the Moot Court Honor Society’s Executive Director Award and the Syracuse Law Review Distinguished Leadership Award.

Lauren Bomberger Managing Associate

Washington, D.C.

Prior to joining Orrick, Lauren was an associate at Buckley LLP.

Thomas M. Bondy Senior Supreme Court Counsel

Washington, D.C.

As FBI Deputy General Counsel, Tom oversaw the Bureau’s nationwide civil litigation docket, including employment disputes, Freedom of Information Act cases, Constitutional tort suits, and an array of matters implicating law enforcement and national security equities. He supervised more than one hundred Office of General Counsel personnel, and advised the FBI’s Director, Deputy Director and other executive management officials regarding especially sensitive litigation issues.

Prior to serving at the FBI, Tom spent 25 years with the Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Staff, as an appellate litigator and supervisor. In that capacity, he oversaw the court of appeals and Supreme Court work of the Appellate staff’s attorneys across the full range of U.S. government subject areas, including Constitutional issues, anti-terrorism and national security, Federal Tort Claims Act, False Claims Act, Bivens, personnel and federal labor relations, Freedom of Information Act, administrative law, attorney fees, and government benefits. Tom personally briefed and orally argued more than one hundred cases in all of the federal courts of appeals and several state appellate courts, and drafted dozens of U.S. Supreme Court merits briefs, amicus briefs, certiorari petitions, and oppositions to certiorari petitions. One of the principal architects of the Justice Department’s litigation strategy in high-stakes appeals, Tom was considered one of the agency’s go-to advocates.

Tom received the Justice Department’s John Marshall Award for outstanding appellate advocacy, as well as the Attorney General’s Award for furthering the interests of U.S. national security. He has served as an instructor at the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute and is also an Adjunct Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law.

Before joining DOJ, Tom clerked for then-Judge (now retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Joshua Bonney Senior Associate

Washington, D.C.

Joshua represents state and local governmental units and their instrumentalities, for-profit and nonprofit corporations, investment banking institutions (underwriters and placement agents), broker-dealers, bank and non-bank direct purchasers, and other market participants in governmental and qualified private activity bond issuance transactions across industry segments. Areas of concentration include:

• state and local government capital projects (essential and social infrastructure);
• qualified 501(c)(3) private activity bonds;
• qualified residential rental projects (affordable and middle-income);
• surface and sub-surface transportation (mass transit facilities);
• airport systems (AMT and non-AMT); and
• energy production and transmission facilities.

Joshua regularly serves as bond counsel, underwriter’s counsel, disclosure counsel, issuer’s counsel, borrower’s counsel, and bank counsel in connection with the issuance of publicly-offered and directly-placed investment-grade and non-investment-grade debt instruments on a secured (senior and subordinate) and unsecured basis in short-term, interim, and long-term form. Products and structures include, among others, on and off-balance sheet project revenue obligations (including alternative project delivery and public-private partnership “P3” executions), appropriation-backed installment method financings (certificates of participation, limited obligation bonds, and lease-purchase obligations), tax-increment financing obligations, enterprise revenue obligations (including airport revenue bonds, water and sewer revenue bonds, and stormwater revenue bonds, etc.), general obligations, special obligations, short-term borrowing programs and other revolving and non-revolving credit facilities, and various forms of credit and liquidity enhanced financings for fixed-rate, variable-rate, and multi-modal obligations.

Ryan Booms Managing Associate

Washington, D.C.

He represents clients in complex matters involving products liability and commercial contracts. He is also active in pro bono matters.

While in law school, Ryan participated in the USC Hale Moot Court Honors Program. He also externed for the Honorable Virginia A. Phillips in the Central District of California. Before law school, Ryan served in the Teach For America corps and taught middle school history.

Mel Bostwick Partner

Washington, D.C.

Mel’s practice capitalizes on two of her passions: technology and great writing. As an appellate lawyer, she has the opportunity to help companies protect their innovations and their intellectual property. She is adept at translating complex technology and intricate legal issues into a clear and simple presentation that judges of any background can understand. Mel brings these skills to bear in representing clients on appeal to the Federal Circuit and before the Supreme Court, and also in partnering with trial teams to address legal and strategic problems in district court, the ITC, and the PTAB. She also regularly advises technology clients on difficult IP and strategic issues facing their companies.

Mel also has the privilege of representing pro bono clients and is particularly passionate about using her Federal Circuit experience to help veterans in their appeals to the court.

Prior to joining Orrick, Mel was an associate at a litigation boutique in Washington, D.C., where she represented clients in trial and appellate litigation and before the Federal Communications Commission. Mel served as a law clerk to Judge Timothy B. Dyk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and Judge Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

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.

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.

Devin Canavan Senior Associate

Washington, D.C.

His practice focuses on the representation of sponsors, issuers, project developers, lenders, investors and governmental entities in project financings, infrastructure projects in the public-private partnership sector and securities offerings.

Josh Carrigan Managing Associate

Washington, D.C.

His practice focuses on intellectual property litigation in district courts and the International Trade Commission, leveraging nearly two decades of leadership and technical experience to provide creative solutions for technical challenges.