Bruce A. Cohen is a former chief counsel and staff director for the US Senate Judiciary Committee.
Cohen has been described as “one of the most influential lawyers on Capitol Hill.” During his 20 years as a top attorney on the Senate Judiciary Committee working closely with US Senator Patrick Leahy, the longtime Democratic committee chairman, Cohen helped shape many major laws, including the Innocence Protection Act, amendments to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, the Justice for All Act, the America Invents Act (patent reform law) and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act.
He also played a key role in the Judiciary Committee’s consideration of the nomination of four Supreme Court Justices and over a thousand other judicial and executive nominations.
“Republicans often talk[ed] about his tenacity and his remarkable rate of success, even in the years when Democrats were in the minority in the Senate,” National Journal said about him.
Before his tenure on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cohen practiced law in Philadelphia and Washington at Dechert Price & Rhoads and in Los Angeles as a partner at Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro.
Cohen received his law degree from the University of California Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he was editor-in-chief of the California Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable Jon O. Newman, US District Court for the District of Connecticut, and then worked as an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Mr. Cohen is admitted to the bar in Washington, DC.
After he left the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013, Cohen completed a yearlong fellowship at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative.