Patrick O’Donnell serves as Chair of the firm’s Litigation & Investigations practice. His practice focuses on government investigations and enforcement matters, legal ethics, and complex civil litigation.

Government Investigations + Enforcement Matters

For more than 25 years, Pat has helped clients facing civil and white-collar criminal investigations and prosecutions. His clients have included private companies, individual executives, and public officials facing serious allegations by federal and state governments. He has represented clients in a wide variety of substantive cases, including matters involving: mail, wire and securities fraud;

• The False Claims Act (FCA);
• Tax evasion;
• Environmental crimes; and
• The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Pat frequently works closely with HWG’s telecoms team to help communications companies respond to federal regulatory investigations, including several investigations involving the FCC’s universal-service subsidy program.

Legal Ethics

Pat has advised corporate legal departments and individual lawyers on compliance with legal ethics and professional responsibility issues in Virginia and the District of Columbia and represented clients in investigations of alleged violations. In addition to counseling clients on legal ethics issues, Pat has served as General Counsel of HWG for almost 20 years, helping the firm proactively address potential ethics issues with a thoughtful, practical counsel.

Civil Litigation

Pat has secured major victories for clients in complex civil litigation, including:

• Winning the vacatur of a judgment and dismissal of a case against a nation state on grounds of sovereign immunity;
• Winning summary judgment for a major international consumer-goods maker in a nationwide class-action antitrust case; and
• Winning the dismissal of a multi-million dollar federal suit for telephone access charges.

Pat’s civil litigation practice has a particular focus on international matters. He is an active member of an international consortium of lawyers and has defended foreign individuals against attempts by the United States to enforce its domestic criminal law extraterritorially.