Ronald C Machen

Practice Areas

Ron Machen, Chair of WilmerHale’s 500-lawyer Litigation and Controversy Department, is one of the nation’s leading trial and white-collar defense lawyers. An experienced litigator who has tried more than 35 cases to verdict, he specializes in litigating complex civil and criminal actions that garner the attention of multiple regulators, enforcement authorities, Congress and private litigants. Clients have long recognized Ron as “an incredible lawyer who provides fantastic legal advice” and someone who “is able to identify issues that other lawyers just don’t see.”

Ron, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia under President Obama from 2010 to 2015, has extensive experience in handling government-facing matters that arise under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the False Claims Act, and federal securities, export sanctions and health care laws. He served as a DOJ-appointed monitor for a large health care company following a settlement with the Department of Justice relating to Anti-Kickback Statute and Stark law violations, and negotiated one of the largest FCPA resolutions in recent years for a large multinational electronics company following a lengthy transnational investigation by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has obtained dismissals of numerous high-profile False Claims Act suits in federal courts across the country and also has successfully represented a multinational technology conglomerate in several state court lawsuits brought by state attorneys generals.

Ron also routinely helps public and private institutions achieve exceptional results in high stakes, bet-the-company litigation. For example, he successfully defended a major pharmaceutical company in a precedent-setting trial brought by the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) where damages sought were over $1 billion, while also successfully suing HHS for breaching its contracts with that same client in the Court of Federal Claims. He also successfully represented a global automaker in products liability and consumer protection litigation in jurisdictions across the country.

He is a member of the Trial Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Diversity Law Institute and serves on the board of the Greater Washington Community Foundation. He also has been recognized by the National Law Journal as a Criminal Law Trailblazer.

To learn more about Mr. Machen, please visit: https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/people/ronald-machen

Personal

JD, Harvard Law School, 1995; AB, Stanford University, 1991