The Washington conference is only three weeks away. It will be held at the JW Marriott in Washington, DC, September 26-28, 2013.There is still time to register (click on the link to the right). If you register and your plans change, full refunds are available until September 19. A block of rooms have been reserved at the hotel at a special conference rate of $264 a night. Hotel reservations may be cancelled up to 72 hours prior to check-in. The cut-off date for hotel reservations has been extended to Friday, September 6. 

The conference will open with a cocktail reception sponsored by Ernst & Young on Thursday evening, September 26, from 6-8 PM on the roof top of Jones Day, overlooking the Capitol, one of the finest venues in Washington. Bus transportation will be provided from the hotel. Golf will available on Thursday morning at the Army Navy Country Club. 

On Friday morning, September 27, the CLE portion of the conference will open at 8 AM, with a welcome from DC US Attorney Ronald Machen, followed by the traditional roundhouse introduction of members. The morning will feature two panel discussions. The first on the False Claims Act, moderated by Bart Daniel and featuring Michael Granston director of the Civil Fraud Division of DOJ, Mark Roberts of Ernst & Young, and NAFUSA members Atlee Wampler and Jack Selden, both of whom are experieced practioneers in the false claims area. The second panel, National Security and Surveillance, will be moderated by Charlie Savage of The New York Times and will feature NAFUSA member Ken Wainstein, Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU and Robert Litt, General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Friday's luncheon will feature comments from Michael Isikoff of NBC. NAFUSA members will then be invited to Main Justice to meet with James Cole, the Deputy Attorney General, Tony West, the Associate Attorney General and Marshall Jarrett,Executive Director of EOUSA, Loretta Lynch, Director of the AGAC and David Margolis, representing the US Attorney community and James Comey, who by then will be the newly sworn in Director of the FBI.  

Friday evening will feature class reunions with the Reagan-Bush I group having dinner at the United States Supreme Court, as guests of Justice Alito. Plans for other classes will be announced soon. 

On Saturday morning, September 28, the CLE programs will continue with the presentation of the J. Michael Bradford Award to AUSA Michael Bosworth, Southern District of New York. It will be followed by a panel discussion on criminal litigation ethics, with Mary Pat Brown, the former head of OPR, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, Andrew Goldsmith, DOJ National Coordinator of Criminal Discovery Initiatives, and Reid Weingarten. The final panel of the conference with be on the Supreme Court, moderated by Pete Williams of NBC and featuring NAFUSA member and former solicitor general Ted Olson and Carter Phillips. 

Lunch on Saturday will be on a leisurely cruise on the Potomac River, sponsored by Greenberg Traurig. The conference will close on Saturday evening with a dinner and general membership meeting. 

The DC Planning Committee is chaired by President Jay Stephens and consists of Kent Alexander, Jeff Taylor, Ken Wainstein, Sharon Zealey and Rich Rossman.

Each year, NAFUSA recognizes an Assistant U.S. Attorney for outstanding performance through the J. Michael Bradford Memorial Award. The award is named after J. Michael Bradford, who served as the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Texas from 1994 to 2001. Bradford, who died in 2003, had a distinguished career in public service, including successfully defending the government against lawsuits stemming from the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian's compound in Waco, Texas. NAFUSA annually solicits nominations from current U.S. Attorneys for the Bradford Award. Typically, the recipient has handled a significant investigation and prosecution or series of prosecutions that has had a significant impact and merits special recognition.

Once again, a number of exceptional nominations were made by U.S. Attorneys around the country. The Michael Bradford Award Committee was chaired by NAFUSA Vice President Matt Orwig. Its members were Ed Dowd, Hal Hardin, Karen Hewitt, Paul Coggins, Joe Whitley and Rich Rossman. This year, the Board voted to give the award to Michael Bosworth.

Bosworth, shown above, is an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York and was nominated by his U.S. Attorney, Preet Bharara. Bosworth currently is the co-chief of the Complex Frauds Unit in the SDNY Office. In that role, he oversees the Office's criminal prosecutions of financial fraud, cybercrime, tax fraud, health care fraud, intellectual property crimes, and FCPA violations, among other white collar crimes.  Prior to his current assignment, he served as deputy chief of the Public Corruption Unit, where he successfully prosecuted former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, former New York State Senator Carl Kruger, and financial advisor Kenneth Starr.  Mr. Bosworth clerked for the Honorable Stephen G. Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Honorable Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York. He graduated Princeton University summa cum laude in 2000 and graduated Yale Law School in 2003.

In August, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder named Jones, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, the acting director of ATF. He has continued as U.S. Attorney during his time at ATF. President Barack Obama nominated Jones for the position of United States Attorney in 2009. President Bill Clinton had appointed him to the same position in 1998, and he served until 2001. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School. Jones has served in the United States Marine Corps.

NAFUSA board member Joe Whitley was named chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice (AdLaw) Section at the just concluded ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.  The section is home to nearly 13,000 lawyers from across the United States.  Whitley is a shareholder in the Atlanta and Washington offices of the international law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP.

As chair of the AdLaw Section, Whitley follows in the footsteps of many notable past chairs, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Professor Cass Sunstein, former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Obama Administration.

Under Whitley's leadership, the section will focus on growing its membership, and continuing the programs and publishing that are hallmarks of the section. Whitley also will focus on building regional strength for the AdLaw Section by creating regional sub-committees for up to five regions in the United States. Additionally, a special committee of corporate general counsels will be created to provide feedback and insights to the AdLaw Section Council on the continuing growth of the regulatory state.

The AdLaw Section is made up of lawyers, judges and others involved in all aspects of administrative law and regulatory issues.  As the home to lawyers who work for, interact with, or study governmental entities, the section seeks to enhance their professional development, and further the vital public interest in effective, efficient, and fair administration of laws and regulations at all levels of government. It serves these goals through education, dialogue, publications, and proposals for reform.

The mission of the AdLaw Section is to provide professional development opportunities for current and future administrative law practitioners; lend its legal expertise to the resolution of important administrative law issues at the state, national and international levels; provide authoritative and practical analyses and products for the improvement of administrative law and practice; and to provide settings in which government, private, and academic lawyers, and the judiciary can exchange insights and information.

The AdLaw Section has more than 40 committees that monitor and review agency actions, new legislation and case law in areas such as rulemaking, adjudication and judicial review, as well as on more specific subjects such as homeland security, transportation, immigration, energy and environment, and freedom of information

Joe Whitley has had a wide-ranging career in the Department of Justice. In the George H.W. Bush administration, Whitley served as the Acting Associate Attorney General, the third-ranking position at Main Justice. He was appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush, respectively, to serve as the United States Attorney in the Middle (Macon) and Northern (Atlanta) Federal Districts of Georgia. Throughout his career, Whitley served under five Attorneys General in a number of key operational and policy positions. Earlier in his career, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Chattahoochee Judicial Circuit in Columbus, Georgia.

In 2003, Whitley was nominated by President George W. Bush to be the first General Counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the highest ranking legal official at DHS. He held that position for two years working for SecretaryTom Ridge and Secretary Michael Chertoff, before his departure and return to private practice.

Corporate defense and representation of clients in complex civil and criminal enforcement matters brought by the Department of Justice, other federal agencies, State Attorneys General and local prosecutors is the focus of Whitley's practice at Greenberg Traurig, where he is Chair of the White Collar Practice in Atlanta.  He has represented numerous individuals and corporations in major government investigations throughout the United States and internationally on a range of matters that include white collar criminal and regulatory enforcement, corporate internal investigations, U.S. export controls and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) compliance, as well as general corporate compliance, health care fraud and FDA related enforcement matters.

Whitley has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America from 2001-2013.  He was selected by Super Lawyers magazine, andGeorgia Super Lawyers from 2010-2013 and listed as one of the "Top 100 Lawyers in Georgia" from 2011-2013. Whitley is also listed as one of "Georgia's Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend magazine, 2008-2012. He was also selected by Super Lawyers magazine for Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers in 2012.

NAFUSA President-Elect Don Stern published an OpEd piece in the August 17th Boston Globe, wherein he discusses the recent conviction of James "Whitey" Bulger, the infamous Boston mobster whose violent crimes were committed during a 25-year reign of terror. Stern was the US Attorney at the time of Bulger's indictment and the US Attorney who approved the Martorano plea agreement in 1999 which led to the prosecution of Bulger and Stephen Flemmi. Underlying the Bulger trial was the corrupt relationship Bulger had with law enforcement.

Click here to read Stern's OpEd piece: Plea deals: A necessary evil

Stern is a managing director, corporate monitoring at Affiliated Monitors, one of NAFUSA's 2013 sponsors, and an attorney with Yurko, Salvesen & Remzstern. He was the United States Attorney in Massachusetts, 1992-2001.

NAFUSA board member Tom Maroney will be unable to attend the September conference in Washington.  Tom fell on August 16 at his home in Syracuse and fractured his neck. His wife, Mary Kay, reports that,

he got up Friday evening and in a sleepy state walked down our upstairs hall in the dark, turning towards the stairs.  He fell the full length of the stairs and fractured and dislocated the cervical vertebrae (C5 and C6).  He was transported by ambulance to our trauma center where he had emergency surgery both Sunday and Tuesday to repair the damage.  Due to the nature of the injury he is very fortunate to be alive and have some movement in his arms and legs.  The doctors are calling it a miracle as his injury to the spine and spinal cord usually result in paraplegia or death. The past week has been a very rocky rollercoaster with intubation, resuscitation, surgery, and overall fragile stability.... His brain is as sharp as ever and his greatest frustration is the very constricting neck collar which makes you feel like you are being strangled.

On August 30, Mary Kay advised that, 

Tom continues to make slow but steady progress but we are looking at months of rehab with the goal of full function of his arms and hands.  The MDs are very optimistic and have told us they expect '"full recovery in 6 - 9 months". Of course this is the goal and Tom is working hard to make that a reality. Yesterday he was transferred from Upstate University Hospital to the Acute Care Rehab Unit (located at Upstate at Community General Hospital).  He is in Rm 424 there.  This morning at 7:30 he began physical therapy followed by occupational therapy for about 3 hrs/day.  We expect he will remain in the Rehab Unit there for about 2 weeks.  Then we hope the next step is home for in-home PT and OT.

Tom and Mary Kay, shown below at the Atlanta conference, will be missed in Washington, but we will hope and pray for an early and full recovery. If you wish to send a note, his address is: Upstate University Hospital at Community Campus 4E Room 424, 4900 Broad Rd, Syracuse, New York 13215.