Christopher R. Kavanaugh

Chris Kavanaugh’s practice focuses on enforcement and litigation, including government and internal investigations, white-collar criminal defense, as well as high stakes disputes, with a particular focus on crisis management and national security-related corporate representations, export controls, and sanctions matters.

Chris led a distinguished career at the highest levels of the Justice Department, most recently appointed by the President and unanimously confirmed by the Senate as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia. As the United States Attorney, Chris led and supervised all criminal and civil litigation for a District with a population of nearly three million people.

Chris has extensive first-chair trial experience, having personally tried over 40 criminal jury trials to verdict. As both lead counsel and as United States Attorney, he has led matters that garnered national attention, including several groundbreaking corporate criminal and civil resolutions.

During his tenure as United States Attorney, Chris served on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC), a small group of United States Attorneys selected by the Attorney General to advise on initiatives and policy across the Department. He was appointed by the Attorney General to chair the AGAC’s National Security Subcommittee, where he led a group of over thirty United States Attorneys in developing Department-wide national security policy and setting national enforcement priorities.

Chris also served on the Corporate Criminal Enforcement Policy Working Group, a group of six United States Attorneys who authored a uniform Voluntary Self-Disclosure policy that set a nationwide standard for detailing the circumstances under which a company will receive credit for disclosing misconduct.

Prior to becoming United States Attorney, Chris was a senior advisor to the Deputy Attorney General and the Attorney General, and oversaw several high-profile national security investigations while in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. He previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney for 14 years in both the District of Columbia and the Western District of Virginia, where he directed investigations and prosecutions focused on white-collar, national security, fraud, public corruption, civil rights, racketeering, and homicides. Chris has also successfully argued appeals in the United States Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia and Fourth Circuits.

Chris joined the firm as a partner in 2025.