Skadden Hires Kocoras, No. 2 at Chicago US Attorney’s Office

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has hired John Kocoras, the number two prosecutor in the Chicago US attorney’s office, as a partner in its litigation practice.

Kocoras has been first assistant US attorney for the Northern District of Illinois since 2018. During his time overseeing work in the office, Chicago’s federal prosecutors brought a bribery case at Exelon Corp.'s Commonwealth Edison unit that implicated politicians including former Illinois Speaker of the House, Michael Madigan, who was forced to step down from his role.

He’ll work with Patrick Fitzgerald, who served as US attorney at the northern district for more than a decade before joining the Skadden in 2012. Fitzgerald in a statement called him “a person of the highest integrity.”

Chicago’s federal prosecutor’s office has yet to turn over since the Biden Administration began. President Donald Trump-appointed US Attorney Jon Lausch, a former Kirkland & Ellis partner, was one of two US attorneys allowed to stay on, as he gained bipartisan backing from Illinois Democratic Senators last year.

Companies should be prepared to “remediate quickly” when they learn of inappropriate behavior, Kocoras said in an interview.

“We are seeing an increased emphasis on compliance programs,” he said. These include “programs, policies and procedures that assume there will be misconduct” and provide ways to address it after it happens.

At Skadden he’ll handle internal investigations, complex litigation, and white-collar criminal defense matters, including Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases, the firm said in a statement.

Kocoras was a federal prosecutor in Chicago from 2000 to 2005 and spent four years as a managing director and regional counsel at investigations firm Kroll.

He then worked for nine years at McDermott Will & Emery before joining the US attorney’s office, where he oversaw cases involving public corruption, securities fraud, violent crimes, drug crimes, and national security matters.