Neal Katyal > Milbank > Washington DC, United States > Lawyer Profile
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Neal Katyal

Work Department
Litigation & Arbitration Group
Position
Partner, Head of Supreme Court and Appellate Practice
Career
Mr. Katyal, the former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, focuses on appellate and complex litigation. He has argued 52 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.
He has extensive experience in matters of antitrust, corporate, constitutional, securities, technology, criminal, patent, copyright, trademark, ERISA, products liability, labor, employment and tribal law. In the 2022-23 Supreme Court term, he argued five separate cases (nearly 10% of the docket), including winning the landmark voting case Moore v. Harper, which Judge Michael Luttig described as “the most important case for American democracy in the almost two and a half centuries since America’s founding.” Judge Luttig also said Mr. Katyal’s argument “was the single best oral argument I have ever heard made in the Supreme Court of the United States.” His cases include successfully striking down the Guantanamo military tribunals, successfully defending the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act and successfully defending the Peace Cross in Maryland. His 2017 win in Bristol Myers Squibb v. Superior Court was a landmark victory for personal jurisdiction law and his 2006 win in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was described by former Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger as “simply the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever.”
From 2010 to 2011, Mr. Katyal served as Acting Solicitor General of the United States, where he argued several major Supreme Court cases involving a variety of issues, such as his successful defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, his victorious defense of former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror, his unanimous victory against eight states who sued the nation’s leading power plants for contributing to global warming, and a variety of other matters. As Acting Solicitor General, he was responsible for representing the federal government of the United States in all appellate matters before the US Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals throughout the nation. He served as Counsel of Record hundreds of times in the US Supreme Court. He was also the only head of the Solicitor General’s office to argue a case in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on the important question of whether certain aspects of the human genome were patentable.
Mr. Katyal clerked for The Honorable Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as well as for The Honorable Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the US Supreme Court. He also served in the Deputy Attorney General’s Office at the Justice Department as National Security Advisor and as Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General during 1998-1999.
Mr. Katyal is a best-selling New York Times author and has published dozens of scholarly articles in law journals (including several in the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal), as well as many op-ed articles in publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. He has testified numerous times before various committees of both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.
Mr. Katyal is the recipient of the highest award given to a civilian by the US Department of Justice, the Edmund Randolph Award, which the Attorney General presented to him in 2011. The Chief Justice of the United States appointed him in 2011 (and again in 2014) to the Advisory Committee on Federal Appellate Rules.
Mr. Katyal has also served as a law professor for over two decades at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was one of the youngest professors to have received tenure and a chaired professorship in the university’s history. He has served as a visiting professor at both Harvard and Yale law schools.
Memberships
In 2021, Mr. Katyal was named a Trustee of Dartmouth College. In 2022, he was named a Trustee of the Whitney Museum in New York City. In 2023, he was named Vice President and Trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society.
Education
Mr. Katyal received his J.D. from Yale Law School and his A.B. from Dartmouth College.
Lawyer Rankings
United States > Dispute resolution > Appellate: courts of appeals / Appellate: supreme courts (states and federal)
(Hall of Fame)Lawyer Rankings
Top Tier Firm Rankings
- Transport > Aviation and air travel: finance
- Finance > Capital markets: high-yield debt offerings
- Finance > Commercial lending > Advice to direct lenders/private credit
- Finance > Commercial lending: Advice to bank lenders
- Dispute resolution > Appellate: courts of appeals / Appellate: supreme courts (states and federal)
- Antitrust > Civil litigation/class actions: defense
- Finance > Project finance
- Energy > Renewable/alternative power
- Finance > Restructuring (including bankruptcy): corporate
- Media, technology and telecoms > Telecoms and broadcast: transactions
Firm Rankings
- Finance > Capital markets: global offerings
- Real estate > Real estate finance
- Dispute resolution > Securities litigation: defense
- Finance > Structured finance: securitization
- Energy > Energy transactions: electric power
- Dispute resolution > General commercial disputes
- Finance > Capital markets: equity offerings
- Finance > Capital markets: equity offerings
- Antitrust > Cartel
- Energy > Energy transactions: oil and gas
- Antitrust > Merger control
- Media, technology and telecoms > Outsourcing
- M&A/corporate and commercial > Private equity buyouts: middle-market (Up to $500m)
- Tax > US taxes: non-contentious
- Labor and employment > Employee benefits, executive compensation and retirement plans: transactional
- M&A/corporate and commercial > M&A: large deals ($1bn+)
- M&A/corporate and commercial > Private equity buyouts: large deals ($500m+)
- Finance > Capital markets: debt offerings
- Dispute resolution > Corporate investigations and white-collar criminal defense