March 2, 2010 — Rita Glavin, former head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division and a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, has joined Vinson & Elkins LLP as a partner in the firm’s New York office effective immediately.

Rita’s addition is an instrumental part of V&E’s plan to aggressively grow our New York office and expand its nationally prominent white collar criminal practice. Rita will lead and build the white collar practice in the world’s financial capital.

"Rita is widely recognized as one of the nation’s best and most respected white collar criminal lawyers," says V&E partner Mark Tuohey, a former federal prosecutor and defense attorney in the firm’s Washington, DC office. "Because Rita knows the white collar criminal practice from her extraordinary career at the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, she is the perfect person to lead and build V&E’s white collar practice in New York."

Adds V&E Managing Partner Joe Dilg, "Rita's joining Vinson & Elkins is an important step in our initiatives to build on our strong New York practice base and be in a position to serve our clients needs with quality legal services."

Rita, who is 38, received her law degree in 1996 from Fordham Law School where she served as Editor in Chief of the Fordham Law Review. She clerked for U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan of the Southern District of New York until 1998, and for the next 11 years she served as a federal prosecutor, first with the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and then with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. She served as trial counsel in 17 federal jury trials, and investigated hundreds of criminal matters, including public corruption offenses, corporate crimes, financial and securities fraud violations, federal campaign finance law violations, and healthcare fraud.

In 2008, Rita was named Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division  the second highest ranking official in the Division. On January 20, 2009, President Obama appointed Ms. Glavin to the position of Acting Assistant Attorney General over the DOJ’s Criminal Division, where she supervised more than 400 attorneys in 18 different criminal sections, worked to develop the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, and testified to Congress several times about the financial crisis and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. Rita returned to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York late last year and tried two criminal cases before joining V&E.

"The Justice Department, SEC, and other government agencies are in the process of intensifying their efforts to investigate financial fraud. I expect to see much more activity on the enforcement front, especially in the areas of procurement and accounting fraud, malfeasance involving TARP money and stimulus funds, FCPA violations, and investment fraud," says Rita, who was named by the National Law Journal last year as one of Washington’s "40 Under 40 Rising Stars." "I chose V&E because V&E is a growing international law firm with excellent lawyers and a strong institutional client base, along with a collaborative working environment designed to bring the best out of its lawyers."

V&E partner Denis Cronin, who is the firm’s Restructuring and Reorganization Practice group co-chair in New York, says that Rita's leadership skills, breadth of experience in the white collar area, and extensive trial experience make her an ideal addition to V&E. "Rita has so much energy and is such a great lawyer that we could not have selected a better person to grow this marquee legal practice in New York," says Denis, who is a former managing partner at Wachtell Lipton. "V&E is committed to aggressively growing our litigation practice in New York, and Rita is a major step in doing so."

Rita, Denis, and Mark are graduates of Fordham Law School and all are active in its alumni affairs.

If you have any questions, please contact Rita Glavin at 212.237.0229 or rglavin@velaw.com, or you may contact Mark Curriden at 214.220.7879 or mcurriden@velaw.com.