Russia Probe DOJ Official Edward O’Callaghan Moves to Cahill

Edward O’Callaghan, a former top Justice Department official under Attorney General William Barr, is joining Cahill Gordon & Reindel as a partner in Washington, DC where he will chair the firm’s congressional investigations practice, the firm announced.

While at the Justice Department between 2017 to 2019 O’Callaghan was principal associate deputy attorney general and worked closely with deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein to oversee the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference. He also had primary supervisory responsibilities over the special counsel’s office led by Robert Mueller III. He returned to private practice in 2020 as a partner at WilmerHale.

O’Callaghan is a veteran of the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan where he served between 1998 until 2008. He was part of the team that investigated the terrorists behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks while serving as co-chief of the office’s Terrorism and National Security Unit.

O’Callaghan said he’s known Herb Washer, chair of Cahill’s executive committee, since they were both young associates at Rogers & Wells in Manhattan.

“He said he wanted to make some investments and wanted build up the DC office,” said O’Callaghan, who will co-head the DC office. “It’s a unique opportunity at this point in my career, going to Cahill, a white shoe firm and help them build up the DC office’s practice.”

Justice Department officials at the highest levels turned to O’Callaghan while in government when preparing for congressional hearings and investigations, according to Washer. “Very few can match his deeply impressive government service at the highest levels,” he said.

O’Callaghan, a graduate of Georgetown University and New York University School of Law, said he hopes to recruit lawyers off Capitol Hill who have a background similar to his, including Justice Department lawyers as well as staffers on oversight committees.

“I have been representing entities like financial institutions in congressional investigations while also preparing executives from big US corporates for their congressional testimony, I want to keep growing that and I think there’s room in this space in DC. The key is to be able to provide a client a bipartisan team. There are firms that are traditionally considered Republican or traditionally Democrat. I think it’s really important that clients know that the investigations practice has both.”

During his time at WilmerHale, O’Callaghan said he prepared a large global institutions and their executives for testimony before congress, the Justice Department as well as state and regulatory inquiries. He hopes to leverage that experience as well as his years as a federal prosecutor handling national security cases and sophisticated frauds.

O’Callaghan is the second partner to recently join Cahill’s litigation practice.

Kiersten Fletcher, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who was a senior member of the office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, joined Cahill as a partner last month.