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2011
Virginia M. Bruner joined the litigation section of Williams Mullen as a partner in Richmond, Va. Bruner is a trial attorney and white-collar and investigations litigator who represents corporations and individuals under investigation by state and federal authorities, as well as internal investigations and compliance matters. Her practice includes advising clients in criminal and civil matters within the financial sector, health care industry and higher education.
Bruner spent several years at the U.S. Department of Justice and served as an assistant special counsel, investigating the discovery of classified documents found in the home and office of President Joe Biden. She also served for nearly seven years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Iowa, where she tried multiple cases to verdict and briefed and argued appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. As a federal prosecutor, she focused on investigating and prosecuting white-collar crimes, including fraud involving government programs.
2012
Joseph Budd, Seth Beckley, Justin Osborn ’10 and Matthew Gambale ’11 are celebrating the fifth anniversary of the launch of Osborn Gambale Beckley & Budd. Based in Raleigh, N.C., the personal injury firm focuses on closing the justice gap in the Carolinas, winning local and national awards for their free “ask-a-lawyer” events.
Caitlin M. Poe was named to Benchmark Litigation’s 40 & Under List for the seventh consecutive year. Poe, a partner with Williams Mullen in Raleigh, N.C., is a trial lawyer and regulatory adviser who represents criminal and civil clients, focusing on representing clients adverse to the state or federal government. Last year, she was selected as vice chair of the Williams Mullen litigation section and recently became a co-chair of its white-collar and investigations practice.
Daniel P. Watkins was among nine defamation lawyers ranked in Chambers High Net Worth Guide for 2024. Watkins is a founding partner of Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch in Washington, D.C., specializing in high-stakes crisis and defamation matters. Having served as counsel in Dominion v. Fox News, his efforts have contributed to some of American history’s largest settlements and verdicts.
2013
Benjamin N. Heriaud joined Vinson & Elkins as a partner in the mergers and acquisitions and capital markets practice group in New York. Heriaud represents corporate, private equity sponsor and investment banking clients, and specializes in capital-raising transactions, focusing on initial public offerings, alternative, hybrid and private capital transactions, acquisition financings and high-yield debt offerings. Heriaud was previously a partner with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Garrick C. Smith was promoted to shareholder at Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr in Dallas. He is a member of the bankruptcy, restructuring and insolvency practice. Smith represents debtors, creditors, trustees, landlords, lenders, third-party purchasers and equity sponsors in out-of-court workouts, bankruptcy cases and insolvency litigation nationwide. Smith has been named to Thomson Reuters’ Texas Rising Stars directory and to the Best Lawyers’ Ones to Watch list for bankruptcy litigation and creditor-debtor rights and insolvency and reorganization each year since 2021.
2014
In February 2014, Becket Marum set up a small singles squash “tournament” at the new McArthur Squash Center in Charlottesville to entertain his future boss, a federal district judge, who was visiting to help with the Law School’s Lile Moot Court Competition. Eight 2014 UVA classmates, friends, the judge and Marum enjoyed round-robin squash, barbecue and conversation.
That gathering of friends became an annual tradition, and the Marum Squash Invitational is now a yearly event drawing friends, squash professionals, lawyers and others who are interested in playing quality squash and helping the indigent in America’s cities.
“The Marum” has been played for 10 consecutive years in major American squash cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C., and at some famous venues like the Racquet Club of Philadelphia and the University Club of Chicago.
Over time, the tournament developed a charitable arm and has become a vehicle for raising funds for the homeless and urban poor. Through the generosity of its players and supporters, Marum’s tournament and his vision for it have resulted in donations of more than $15,000 to the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit and other urban charities over the past five years.
Marum brought his tournament back to its roots at the McArthur Squash Center in March. In commemoration of its 10th anniversary, Marum invited all past players, including 10 UVA Law alumni, to attend. Play culminated with a championship match on the glass court, and Luis Alvarez ’88, president and CEO of the UVA Law School Foundation, spoke at the 2024 Marum champions’ dinner held in the boardroom of the Boar’s Head Inn. That event was attended by approximately 20 squash players, financial supporters and other friends, including a member of the UVA varsity squash team and the federal judge who played in the first tournament.
“It was a great day of celebration, fun and recognition of charitable generosity,” Marum wrote.
When not busy chairing the Marum Squash Invitational, Marum serves as counsel to FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) in Washington, D.C., where he resides. He is married to Mary Murphy (Darden ’20) and father to Nina Frances Murphy Marum, age 2.
Tres Moore was featured in a Chick-fil-A Corporate Support Center video on LinkedIn. Moore, director of real estate for the corporation, ran into a new company hire serendipitously while out to dinner with his wife. They noticed the new hire’s excitement and struck up a conversation. Moore and his wife welcomed the new hire and her fiancé to the Chick-fil-A team (and quietly paid for their dinner). The company cited the story as an example of their culture of caring.
2015
Zach Branson returned to Jones Walker as a partner in the tax practice group in Atlanta. He was previously an associate on their business and commercial transactions team in Jackson, Miss., from 2017 to 2021. Branson’s practice is concentrated on federal and state new markets tax credits and other tax-advantaged transactions. He regularly represents institutional investors, project developers, lenders, community development entities and nonprofit organizations.
Alexander Cohen joined Cozen O’Connor’s securities litigation and Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement practice in New York. Cohen, a securities enforcement regulatory attorney, has represented and defended some of the country’s leading financial institutions, broker-dealers and public companies in Justice Department, FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) and SEC-related matters. Outside of work, he is devoted to improving the greater New York community by supporting several nonprofit organizations, including helping to launch The City Tutors, a nonprofit academic and professional development organization that supports underserved neighborhoods.
Andrew Lanius was promoted to partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in Houston. Lanius practices with the firm’s banking and credit practice. Earlier this year, Lanius married Tessa Lanius, née Taylor, and in April, the couple welcomed their son, William George Lanius.
2016
Brian Rho was selected as a 2024 Leadership Council on Legal Diversity Pathfinder. Rho is an associate with Littler’s employment law group in Seattle. He focuses his practice on defending employers in class and collective actions under federal and Washington state wage and hour laws, providing practical advice and conducting audits to ensure compliance.
The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity is an organization of more than 400 corporate chief legal officers and law firm managing partners who have pledged to help create a diverse U.S. legal profession. The Pathfinders program is focused on foundational leadership and relationship-building. It gives participants the chance to learn from top legal professionals, as well as experts in learning and development and executive coaching.
John Kendrick ’16 Sees Issue Raised in Student Note Decided at Supreme Court
When John Kendrick ’16 sat down to pen a research paper as a student at the Law School eight years ago, he thought he was identifying an important question for the U.S. Supreme Court to address.
“The last paragraph of my note says something like, ‘Hopefully this can be used as a blueprint for future briefs, and perhaps that will lead to Supreme Court review and victory,’” he said. “I wasn’t optimistic that would actually happen, but it did.”
On July 1, the justices answered, issuing a 6-3 opinion in Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, a ruling that may have been inspired in part by his paper. The decision clarified how long citizens have to sue federal agencies if they believe the agency’s actions harmed them.
Through his 2017 note for the Virginia Law Review, “(Un)limiting Administrative Review: Wind River, Section 2401(A), and the Right to Challenge Federal Agencies,” Kendrick became an expert on the topic of the timeline for suing federal agencies. He served as an amicus curiae in the case’s certiorari stage, submitting a brief in an advisory role when the court was deciding whether to review the case. Once the Supreme Court granted cert, he also filed a brief on the merits of the case, explaining to the Supreme Court how and why the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision was flawed.
To see the question he posed years ago finally conclude “was an incredibly surreal experience,” Kendrick said.
In order to fulfill the Law School writing requirement, Kendrick sat down with Professor John Duffy in his final year of law school to sift through potential topics for a paper he hoped to publish as a note in the Virginia Law Review, where Kendrick served as an articles editor. Duffy, an administrative law and intellectual property expert, advised Kendrick to choose a niche subject in which he would have a comparative advantage as a law student.
“It’s highly unlikely that a law student is going to come up with something novel to say about, for example, the commerce clause,” Kendrick explained. “You have to find something you can become an expert in by digging through primary sources in a way that hasn’t been done before.”
Duffy had flagged the issue that became the heart of Corner Post as something that seemed a bit odd to him, and felt it would work for Kendrick’s note because no one had previously considered it in depth.
Kendrick’s note examines the statute of limitations—the time frame for which legal proceedings can be initiated after an alleged legal violation—for Administrative Procedure Act claims. Prior to the July 1 ruling, in many circuits certain APA claims had to be brought within six years of the agency’s action, rather than six years from when the person was harmed by the agency.
After Kendrick’s student note was published, several lawyers working on similar cases reached out to him.
“They were encountering this issue and saying, ‘This is crazy. There’s got to be someone who’s addressed this,’” Kendrick said. “The issue was starting to percolate a bit.”
In Corner Post, the namesake North Dakota truck stop sued the Federal Reserve over a regulation on debit card swipe fees that was put into effect in 2011. According to past understandings of the statute of limitations, the deadline for lawsuits over the regulation was in 2017, but Corner Post didn’t open its doors until 2018.
“This seemed out of step with how the word ‘accrue’ is interpreted in almost every other [similar] statute of limitations; typically statutes of limitations are interpreted to run from the time the person is harmed,” Kendrick explained.
The Supreme Court agreed: The six-year limitations period did not begin to run against Corner Post until it opened its doors in 2018, and therefore its claim—filed in 2021—was timely.
“The [SCOTUS opinion] corrected a doctrine that just didn’t make any sense,” Kendrick said. “It wasn’t right as a matter of textual interpretation or policy, and it didn’t comport with basic fairness or the structure of administrative review in this country.”
Duffy said Kendrick’s note was most likely to have influenced the Supreme Court in the decision to hear the case.
“The fact that someone wrote significant scholarship on the statute of limitations for APA claims—and detailed the conflicting views and weaknesses of the dominant view in the lower courts, and did so years before the case rose to the court—tells the court that this issue has been percolating for years,” Duffy said. “That’s a huge sign that it’s significant and it’s not going to go away.”
A Northern Virginia native, Kendrick was involved with the Federalist Society and the Innocence Project while on North Grounds.
He now works as an antitrust lawyer in D.C. and enjoys biking with his children and cheering on the Washington Commanders and Capitals.
—Josette Corazza
2017
In July, Charles Eric Hintz joined the University of Missouri School of Law as an associate professor of law. His research and teaching interests are focused on criminal law and procedure. Hintz previously practiced with Shapiro Arato Bach in New York and served as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where he taught federal habeas corpus.
2018
Trevor Topf was named vice president of legal at LIV Golf in March. Topf previously was an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York City, where he focused on corporate law matters. LIV Golf, a professional men’s golf tour created with funding from Saudi Arabia, is led by CEO Greg Norman, a former pro golfer.
2017
2019
Tyler S. Johnson joined Williams Mullen’s corporate section as an associate in Richmond, Va. Johnson focuses his practice on assisting founders, entrepreneurs, management teams and strategic investors in executing a broad array of equity and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and company formation transactions. Johnson advises emerging growth companies on governance, commercial contracts and other general corporate matters.
2020
Allen Braddock joined Pierce Atwood in Portland, Maine, as an associate in the tax practice group. Braddock previously served as a senior tax attorney for Exxon Mobil Corp. in Houston, where he participated in negotiations with state governments to reduce or drop multimillion-dollar tax assessments against the company.
Manal Cheema was named one of the American Bar Association’s On the Rise - Top 40 Young Lawyers. Cheema is a U.S. Navy JAG Corps lieutenant and serves as a legal assistance attorney and branch head at the Region Legal Service Office Western Pacific branch office in Guam. In May, Cheema was named the Naval Legal Service Command Junior Officer of the Quarter for the civil legal assistance she provided to service members and families stationed in Guam and her support of the prosecution of an international drug ring.
Hunter Waters joined Herrick Feinstein as an associate in the restructuring and finance litigation department in New York. Previously, Waters was an associate at Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch and served as a clerk to Jennifer L. Attrep ’06, chief judge of the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
Timothy J. Whittle is an associate with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings’ Government Contracts Practice Group in Washington, D.C. Whittle advises government contractors in their business dealings, including handling bid protests and other contract disputes. Whittle joined the firm from McGuireWoods.
2022
Elizabeth C. Adler is a 2024-25 U.S. Supreme Court Fellow assigned to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the agency responsible for establishing sentencing policies and practices for the federal courts. Adler joined the program from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where she clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay. She was previously in private practice in Washington, D.C.
