Elizabeth Holmes Prosecutor Bostic Joins Cooley in Palo Alto

Elizabeth Holmes prosecutor John Bostic will join Cooley as a partner in Palo Alto, California as the firm builds its white collar, litigation and investigation practices.

He spent nearly nine years as an assistant US attorney and played a leading role in the investigations and trials of Theranos Inc. founder Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was the company’s chief operating officer and president.

“Finishing up those projects felt like the end of a chapter for me,” Bostic said in an interview. “When a chapter ends, you start thinking about what the next chapter is going to be.” Cooley hit “the sweet spot” for him with the growth of its white collar and litigation practices, he said.

Cooley, with prominent clients such as Apple Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Nvidia Corp., has been adding former US officials and litigators as federal agencies step up activities in areas that affect big tech, including data privacy, cybersecurity and antitrust.

John Bostic

Heather Sawyer, a 13-year Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill who once worked as the chief counsel for the Select Committee on Benghazi, joined the firm last month as a special counsel for the congressional investigations practice in Washington. Cooley in February launched the practice with the hire of Susanne Sachsman Grooms, whose resume includes work in Congress, the White House, the IRS and the Justice Department.

Rebekah Donaleski, a former federal prosecutor who led the public corruption unit for the Southern District of New York, joined the firm’s white collar defense team in November. Bostic’s role also will be in white collar defense, as well as investigations and global litigation.

“We are on a mission to add elite, next-generation talent to our litigation team,” said Michael Attanasio, chair of Cooley’s global litigation department. “John fits perfectly into that strategic plan.”

Bostic joined the US attorney’s office in 2015 after six years at litigation boutique Keker & Van Nest. As a federal prosecutor, he worked on cases that included securities fraud, bank fraud, insider trading, and computer hacking.

He served as co-first-chair trial counsel in a domestic terrorism case that resulted in the conviction of right-wing extremists who carried out a fatal attack on the Oakland federal courthouse in 2020.

In the Theranos case, his work led to an 11 1/4-year sentence of Holmes in 2022 for defrauding investors in her blood-testing startup. Cooley had represented Holmes in a separate class action civil litigation, but later withdrew due to unpaid bills. Balwani was sentenced to 13 years after his fraud conviction.

The Theranos trial and Holmes’ conviction has affected companies’ startup mentality and the promises executives make to investors, Attanasio said. “That’s why, ideally, you need a deep bench of partners with the credentials that John has to help clients navigate those areas and those controversies,” he said.