Ballard Spahr LLP

Litigation

Partner

Jay Ward Brown has been representing news and entertainment companies for three decades. He has litigated defamation, privacy, copyright, subpoena, and access matters in the U.S. Supreme Court, federal and state appellate courts, and trial courts around the country. Jay also regularly serves as clearance counsel for producers of documentary films and TV series—including Oscar-, Emmy-, and Dupont-Columbia Award-winning productions—and provides legal vetting of stories for newspaper and magazine publishers.

For a number of years, Jay served as national defamation counsel to the NAACP and was privileged to accept the NAACP’s Civil Rights Champion Award “for outstanding pro bono service and commitment to advancing civil rights and social justice.”

As a public television journalist before law school, Jay produced or wrote many of the late Fred W. Friendly’s award-winning programs on the Constitution, the press, law, and ethics. In 2007, Jay took a three-year leave from private practice to help Hiscox, a Lloyd’s of London insurance syndicate, open its U.S. claims operations. He headed the company’s North American media claims unit until he returned to his law practice in 2010. Jay was one of the founding attorneys of the highly regarded First Amendment boutique law firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz in 1997, which merged with Ballard Spahr in October 2017.

Professional Activities

Trial Law Institute, Member

Diversity Law Institute, Member

Media Law Resource Center, Defense Counsel Section, past President

Media Law Resource Center Institute, past Board of Trustees member and past Chair

Law360, past Media and Entertainment Editorial Advisory Board

ABA Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section, Media, Privacy & Defamation Law Committee, past Vice Chair

ABA Forum on Communications Law, past Governing Board

Trinity College, Adjunct Instructor in Law of Mass Communications, 1999-2003

University of Maryland School of Journalism, Adjunct Instructor in Media Law, 1995-1996

Admissions

District of Columbia

Maryland

New York

Virginia

U.S. Supreme Court

U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and District of Columbia Circuits

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland

U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Northern, and Southern Districts of New York

U.S. District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Virginia

New York University School of Law (J.D. 1992, cum laude) Fellow, Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (M.S. 1985, with honors)

University of Minnesota at Minneapolis (B.A. 1984) Phi Beta Kappa