DOJ Veteran Grider Takes Crisis Management Role at Brown Rudnick

Brown Rudnick has brought aboard Justice Department veteran Mark Grider as head of its crisis management litigation government response team in Washington, the law firm said Monday.

Grider previously worked in the Trump White House and spent two decades at the Justice Department. He joins Brown Rudnick from Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, where led the firm’s crisis management and congressional investigations practice.

Grider will also be a partner in Brown Rudnick’s white collar defense, investigations and compliance practice. He will represent clients in False Claims Act cases, consumer fraud litigation, crisis management litigation and federal criminal investigations, the firm said.

Steve Best, chair of Brown Rudnick’s white collar defense practice, said, in a statement, that the firm is “further expanding our federal government investigations capabilities” with Grider’s hiring.

Earlier this year, Rudnick hired former Norton Rose Fulbright partner Jeffrey Cottle as a white collar defense practice partner. Cottle, a former BAE Systems Inc. vice president, also has been a partner at Steptoe & Johnson.

Grider held various posts over 20 years at the Justice Department. Most recently, he was deputy associate attorney general, responsible for criminal matters involving the antitrust and civil divisions, the consumer protection branch, the environment and natural resources division and the tax division.

Earlier, he was a prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, and served as the department’s special counsel on health care and co-chaired the department’s health care fraud task force.

He worked in the White House Counsel’s Office for two years ending in 2020, where he advised on oversight and regulatory matters involving federal agencies.

From 2014 to 2016, Grider was deputy general counsel for the House of Representatives Select Committee, helping to handle the congressional investigation into the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

He served a stint as a legislative assistant for Republican Sen. John Ashcroft (Mo.) between 1998 and 2001. Grider also spent nearly three years a special inspector general for Iraq Reconstruction at the Justice Department.