Progressive Legal Group Hires Top Appellate Lawyers (2)

A nonprofit legal organization that’s been taking on the Trump administration is stacking its staff with prominent Supreme Court and appellate litigators.

The liberal-leaning Democracy Forward Foundation announced Tuesday that Nathaniel Zelinsky has left Milbank to join the organization as a senior counsel. Zelinsky had started at Milbank in February. He followed Supreme Court heavy hitter Neal Katyal to the firm from Hogan Lovells LLP to be part of its new Supreme Court practice.

Zelinsky’s move to Democracy Forward comes a little over two months after Milbank agreed to a deal with President Donald Trump to provide free legal services for causes that are administration priorities in order to avoid punitive executive orders.

In May, Democracy Forward announced that Paul Wolfson had joined the organization as a senior legal advisor. Wolfson co-chaired WilmerHale’s Supreme Court and appellate practice before supervising litigation at the Justice Department’s Civil Division as a deputy associate attorney general during the Biden administration.

The organization said Monday Joshua Salzman, the former assistant director of the Justice Department’s civil appellate staff, has also joined its ranks as a senior counsel along with Yenisey Rodríguez, who recently served as senior counsel and manager at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. Anisha Hindocha, who served as deputy research director at the ethics watchdog American Oversight, has also come on as an oversight attorney.

At American Oversight, Hindocha led investigations into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and the Republican Attorneys General Association, Democracy Forward said.

DOJ Experience

Democracy Forward, which was founded after Trump first won the White House in 2016, has sued to stop his administration in its second term from dismantling the Education Department, prevent the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk from accessing taxpayer data through the Internal Revenue Service, and keep Trump from using a wartime law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The group said it’s filed more than 80 legal actions, launched more than 90 investigations, and issued nearly 1,000 Freedom of Information Act requests in response to Trump administration actions.

The group in April announced it had added five attorneys from the Justice Department— Jodie Morse, a former deputy associate attorney general, Brian Netter, a former deputy assistant attorney general, senior counsels Pooja Boisture and Cynthia Liao, and senior staff attorney Christine Coogle.

It added to that roster Tuesday with Amy Vickery, a former trial attorney in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, who joined the group as an oversight attorney, along with Simon Brewer, a former appellate attorney in the civil division, who joined as a senior staff attorney.

Joe Shantz also joined the group as a senior policy counsel. He served as senior counselor to Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su during the Biden administration.

“As attacks on the rule of law and the basic rights of people escalate, this is a moment for lawyers to step up,” Democracy Forward’s president and CEO Skye Perryman said in a news release, adding that the organization continues to grow to “meet the administration’s harmful and unlawful conduct with swift legal action.”

Zelinsky joins Democracy Forward fresh off a Supreme Court victory. He represented a Texas woman fighting for the chance to hold police liable for killing her son during a traffic stop in his first Supreme Court argument on Jan. 22 and won unanimously. The justices agreed courts must look at the totality of the circumstances when considering whether an officer’s use of excessive force in a police stop or arrest is reasonable.

The Yale Law School alum has been representing Cathy Harris, who Trump fired from the Merit Systems Protection Board in February. Harris’ challenge to Trump’s power to fire independent agency officials. Is now pending before the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.