WASHINGTON, DC, March 13, 2015 – Bruce A. Cohen, former chief counsel and staff director for the US Senate Judiciary Committee, is joining whistleblower law firm Phillips & Cohen LLP as Of Counsel.
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,” the National Journal said about him.
“We are thrilled to have Bruce Cohen join the firm,” said Erika A. Kelton, a senior partner at Phillips & Cohen. “His legal skills and his knowledge of the law, the judicial system and Washington are unsurpassed and will greatly benefit our whistleblower clients.”
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 graduated from Stanford University and 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.
Following his departure from the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013, Cohen completed a yearlong fellowship at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative. He is married to Mary Louise Cohen, a founding partner of Phillips & Cohen.