Paul Weiss Adds Former SEC Deputy Director to Litigation Team

Paul Weiss said Wednesday it boosted its litigation team in New York with Antonia Apps, former deputy enforcement director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Apps led the SEC’s New York office from 2023 until 2025, overseeing more than 600 attorneys and personnel. The SEC’s then-acting chairman Mark Uyeda in January 2025 named her acting deputy director of enforcement, and later deputy director, of enforcement overseeing New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. She stepped down in December.

“Antonia is an exceptional litigator with a proven track record,” Scott Barshay, chair of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, said in a statement.

The hire marks the firm’s first announcement since Barshay took over as chair Feb. 4 after longtime leader Brad Karp stepped down after new revelations about his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The day before Barshay took over the firm said it opened an office in Houston with Kirkland & Ellis partners Sean Wheeler and Debbie Yee.

Apps, a former Milbank partner, also spent eight years as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. There she led high-profile insider trading and securities fraud cases, including the prosecution of the hedge fund S.A.C. Capital Advisors.

She said in a statement she has “long admired the exceptional talent of the Paul Weiss litigators” and that the firm’s entire “platform has extraordinary depth.”

Jessica Carey, co-head of the Paul Weiss litigation department, said Apps “combines first-chair trial experience, sophisticated regulatory insight, and the strategic judgment clients rely on in their most consequential matters.”