WilmerHale is pleased to announce that Brian Boynton has returned to the firm as a partner following his service in the US Department of Justice.
Boynton will be a member of the firm's Government and Regulatory Litigation Group and will be based in Washington DC.
Until earlier this year, Boynton served as a counselor to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. In that role, he helped the attorney general oversee the department's vast legal portfolio, including civil and Supreme Court litigation, antitrust and immigration matters, and litigation involving financial institutions.
He was involved in coordinating the Civil Division's defense of some of the most high-profile and significant matters before the department, including challenges to the Affordable Care Act, agency guidance relating to gender identity discrimination and other administrative agency actions.
Before his role as a counselor to the attorney general, Boynton was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the federal post he assumed when he left the WilmerHale partnership in 2014. At the OLC, Boynton provided advice to the White House and Executive Branch agencies on a wide range of complex constitutional, statutory and administrative law questions, and he was one of the leaders of the team that analyzed the constitutionality of proposed and enacted legislation.
“We enthusiastically welcome Brian back to the firm,” said Robert Novick, a WilmerHale co-managing partner. “During his previous time at WilmerHale, Brian earned a well-deserved reputation for his exceptional judgment and analytical ability. He is a versatile and superb litigator—a brilliant lawyer who will serve clients across a wide range of areas, including the Administrative Procedure Act, breach of contract, antitrust, the False Claims Act, lending discrimination, the Lanham Act and electronic surveillance matters. He's not only a great lawyer but an outstanding colleague and mentor as well.”
Of his return to the firm, Boynton said, “I am thrilled to be back at WilmerHale. I greatly value the firm's collegiality, respect for public service, commitment to providing exceptional client service and desire to take on the most complex and challenging matters. I very much look forward to working with this extraordinary group of lawyers and colleagues.”
Boynton graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1997 with a degree in economics. In 2000, he graduated Order of the Coif from Stanford Law School, where he was a notes editor of the Stanford Law Review. Before joining WilmerHale in 2002, Boynton served as a law clerk to then-Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and to Judge Vaughn Walker of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.