Former Federal Prosecutor Leads Public Service Center
Ryan Faulconer ’08 Brings Range of Mentoring Experiences To Role in Counseling Students
Ryan Faulconer ’08 has been a federal prosecutor for the past 15 years, but he’s been mentoring students even longer.
Faulconer has coached the University of Virginia’s undergraduate mock trial team since he was a first-year law student at UVA and guided young attorneys while serving in the U.S. Justice Department. He is now applying those mentoring skills and career expertise in his new role as the school’s assistant dean for public service and director of the Mortimer Caplin Public Service Center.
Faulconer, who joined the school in June, is helping the next generation of UVA Law students launch their careers in public service — whether working in prosecution or defense, or for government, nonprofits or legal aid organizations. He also encourages all students to gain experience through public service while still in law school.
“A huge part of what made me want to do this job was to be able to just help as many people as possible,” Faulconer said. “I feel strongly about public service, and I feel strongly that everybody has something they can give.”
Dean Leslie Kendrick ’06 said she is “thrilled to have Ryan back at the Law School and in this role.”
“With his stellar credentials and dedication to working with students, he will be a wonderful resource for UVA Law students interested in public service careers of all kinds,” Kendrick said.
A Colorado Springs native, Faulconer first encountered UVA students when they beat his undergraduate University of Kansas team during a mock trial competition. Later, the UVA team’s coach, a law student who was about to graduate, helped convince him to study at UVA Law, and recruited him to help the University’s mock trial team. (See sidebar)
Faulconer entered law school thinking he would either be a criminal defense attorney, like his high school mock trial coach, or a sports agent. Instead, during his first-year summer, he found his calling interning with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlottesville.
“I remember witnessing the camaraderie they all had in that office, and I just loved it,” he said. “When I went to a law firm my second summer, I was instantly drawn to all the people who had previously worked for DOJ and had done that type of work.”
Though Faulconer, who participated in the Prosecution Clinic, also competed in mock trial competitions and extramural moot court while in law school, “I always was more interested in putting effort into the coaching and the mentoring than standing up and speaking myself.”
After graduating from UVA and earning the school’s Pro Bono Award, he clerked for Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia, crediting advice from Professor Rachel Harmon for landing the job, “even though I never took a class with her.”
When his clerkship ended, he accepted an honors program position with the Fraud Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. In that role, he worked on government contracting, war zone procurement and corruption cases, typically involving the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When an opening for assistant U.S. attorney arose in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, he jumped at the chance. He eventually became the district’s public corruption coordinator.
Faulconer served on the trial team that prosecuted former Gov. Bob McDonnell for corruption, and on another that resulted in the longest white-collar criminal sentence for the Eastern District of Virginia at the time, for a former America’s Most Wanted fugitive who defrauded the Defense Department by supplying fake parts that endangered military personnel. In another memorable case, he helped more than 3,100 victims of mortgage rescue fraud in a case against a group who pretended to help the victims avoid foreclosure. Instead, the victims lost not only their homes, but their last financial reserves.
“I’m an adopted kid, which has always made me feel very acutely the reality that you don’t quite know why you get the opportunities you do,” he said. “Or the impact that a random event or turn of fortune can have — good or bad — on someone.”
Faulconer’s sense of compassion was also inspired by his parents. His father, an orthodontist, treated the people in his office “like family.” His mother, a former guidance counselor, teacher and now writer, inspired him to help and listen to people.
“That’s probably the reason I always flag that I’m adopted, because I feel like I won the adoption lottery with them,” he said.
At the Eastern District of Virginia, he was able to apply his interest in helping young people by leading the district’s intern program.
“I loved meeting with the young students. I loved giving them advice. I loved when they would find a job that was the right fit for them, or when they would come back and say, you know, it was the right fit for a while, but it’s not the right fit anymore,” he said.
After serving as an AUSA, he returned to the Justice Department to serve in the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. He got a taste of advising lawyers and others in the field on digital evidence issues, while learning alongside them.
“You’d get people calling you from everywhere in the country going, ‘Hey, I have a problem. How do we find this evidence from this social media company?’ And you're like, ‘I have no idea, but let's roll up our sleeves and let me help you.’”
His Justice Department work earned him a Director’s Award and several Council of the Inspectors General awards.
His most recent step in his DOJ career happened back where he started as a UVA Law intern — at the Western District of Virginia, working for U.S. Attorney Chris Kavanaugh ’06 and Criminal Division Chief Katie Burroughs Medearis in Charlottesville. After living in the D.C. area for so many years, he was ready to try something different.
“As a Colorado kid, there's some natural overlap with Charlottesville,” he said. “There’s a different type of mountains, but there are still mountains.”
Faulconer thought he might spend the rest of his career in the role, but when the opportunity arose to lead the school’s Public Service Center, he was excited to be able to translate his skills in mentoring and problem-solving to counseling UVA Law students.
“To [mentor] at scale, at what I think is the best law school in the country for public service, is just really a cool opportunity because it allows me to do everything I can to be as constructive and positive for students, while also still growing and broadening my perspective and learning from the diversity of experience that we have here at the Law School.”
Faulconer said he was excited about working with the Public Service Center and Career Development teams, as well as Law School administrators and faculty more broadly.
“It's really cool to be part of a group that carries itself as the best at what it does,” he said. “I’ve already learned so much from my Public Service Center colleagues Amanda, Dawn and Andrew in the last two months about what they built over the years with Professor [Annie] Kim and others who’ve worked at the PSC. I can’t wait for all of the students to be here.”
Faulconer (left) coached then-undergraduates Kevin Richards ’14 (fourth from left), Jamar Walker ’11 and UVA Law lecturer Benjamin Sachs ’09 (sixth and seventh from left), who were on the 2006 national championship team. Courtesy photo
Coach Faulconer
When Ryan Faulconer ’08 was being recruited to UVA Law School as a student nearly 20 years ago, he was also being recruited for another job — helping coach UVA’s mock trial team.
Mock trial — “It’s all about learning very real communication and team-building skills in the context of a fake case” — has been a passion of his since high school.
As a student at the University of Kansas, he competed against UVA’s mock trial team, and contacted their coach when he was considering law school. The coach, Daniel Shapiro ’05, was eager to recruit him.
“I remember coming out [to the admitted students open house] and then I met with several of the students who were on the team that weekend or that week,” Faulconer said. “That was one of the parts of the calculus in deciding to come here — I already have an opportunity to do something cool that’s a continuation of a thing I already felt passionate about.”
In his first year as coach, the team won the national championship. Then UVA Law professor Toby Heytens ’00, who had just joined the faculty after a Supreme Court clerkship and doing appellate work at a law firm, returned and asked the team if he could also coach.
With Heytens joining the program, “We won nationals again,” Faulconer said, and the second UVA team also finished in the top 10 for the first time. “That might’ve been one of the most dominant seasons any program has ever had. And it was just the beginning.”
Faulconer switched places with Heytens and became assistant coach for a time after graduating, then became head coach again when Heytens became a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
“I learned more about life from Toby than anyone else aside from maybe my parents,” Faulconer said. He and Heytens were inducted into the American Mock Trial Association’s Coaches Hall of Fame together in 2021.
The UVA team is currently ranked No. 1 in the country, having won the national championship last year, and has taken the national title more than any other school — four times — since Faulconer became a coach.
Several students on the undergraduate team went on to law school at UVA and to careers in public service, including Jamar Walker ’11, a graduate who served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia alongside Faulconer before being confirmed to a federal judgeship for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2023; Kevin Richards ’14, who won the Lile Moot Court competition and now works as an associate solicitor at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; and Amanda Swanson ’20, who currently works at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. Like Faulconer, students who competed against UVA also later came to the Law School to coach the team, including Megan Keenan ’18, a former Public Interest Law Association president who is now a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, and Ryan Leonard ’18, who currently works for the Securities and Exchange Commission. A current fellow in the Program in Law and Public Service, Kevin Baker ’26, helped the team win its most recent championship last year.
“Three of the people from that first national championship team ended up being AUSAs in the EDVA U.S. Attorney’s Office. And I ended up doing trials with two of them,” Faulconer said. “We wouldn’t have won any more national championships after those first two if we hadn’t had so many others in the mix. The fact they’ve gone on to work in public service is even better.”
He credited coaching to adding to his own expertise.
“I believe you learn as much or more from the students that you teach as they do from you,” he said. “I’m also just really excited about continuing to learn from youth. Surrounding yourself with young people just continually helping you grow has been a huge part of my life.”
Founded in 1819, the University of Virginia School of Law is the second-oldest continuously operating law school in the nation. Consistently ranked among the top law schools, Virginia is a world-renowned training ground for distinguished lawyers and public servants, instilling in them a commitment to leadership, integrity and community service.
