Neal Katyal

The former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, Neal currently runs one of the largest Supreme Court practices in the world at Hogan Lovells, where he occupies the role formerly held by now Chief Justice John Roberts. He has extensive experience in Constitutional law and Criminal Law. He has orally argued 39 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, with 37 of them in the last decade. At the age of 49, he has already argued more Supreme Court cases in U.S. history than any other minority attorney, breaking the record of Thurgood Marshall.

Neal served as Acting Solicitor General during the Obama administration (the federal government's top courtroom lawyer). He was responsible for representing the federal government in all appellate matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals throughout the nation. He also served in the Deputy Attorney General’s Office at the Justice Department as National Security Advisor. Additionally, Neal is a law professor with more than two decades of experience at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was one of the youngest professors to have received tenure and a chaired professorship in the university’s history. At Georgetown, Neal also serves as Faculty Chair of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. Neal has also been a visiting professor at both Harvard and Yale law schools. 

Neal has received almost every award a lawyer can win. In December 2017, American Lawyer magazine named him The Litigator of the Year; he was chosen from all the lawyers in the United States for being the top litigator for a two-year period. He earlier received the Edmund Randolph Award, the highest award the U.S. Justice Department can award a civilian, which the Attorney General presented to him in 2011. 

He has also been named one of the 40 Most Influential Lawyers of the Last Decade Nationwide by National Law Journal (2010); Appellate MVP by Law360 numerous times; winner of the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer Award for 2017 in two different categories (both private and public law). Neal has published dozens of scholarly articles in law journals, as well as many op-ed articles in such publications as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He has testified numerous times before various committees of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Dartmouth College. 

A frequent contributor to MSNBC and the New York Times, Neal has been named one of GQ’s Men of the Year and has appeared on virtually every major American news program, as well as House of Cards, where he played himself.