In 2011, the government lawyer Reed Brodsky was part of a trial team that secured a conviction of the hedge fund titan Raj Rajaratnam on insider trading charges.
A year later, Mr. Brodsky led the successful prosecution of Rajat K. Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs director found guilty of leaking boardroom secrets about the bank to Mr. Rajaratnam.
On Thursday, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher is expected to announce that Mr. Brodsky will leave the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan to join the law firm as a partner in its white-collar criminal defense practice.
“Reed is a star in federal prosecutorial circles,†said Randy M. Mastro, co-head of Gibson Dnn’s litigation practice. “He has tried some of the hardest, most high-profile cases in his office, winning one after the other.â€
Mr. Brodsky is the latest government lawyer to leave public service for the private sector. On Wednesday, Lanny A. Breuer, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, announced his departure, and he is widely expected to resume his previous career as a defense lawyer.
The two prosecutors who tried Mr. Rajaratnam with Mr. Brodsky â€" Jonathan R. Streeter and Andrew Z. Michaelson â€" have already moved on to partnerships at corporate law firms.
Raised in Melville, N.Y., on Long Island, Mr. Brodsky, 43, was educated earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University and attended law school at Vanderbilt. Before joining the Justice Department, Mr. Brodsk! y was an associate at WilmerHale, where he worked on the internal investigations of the corporate accounting frauds at Enron and WorldCom.
He joined the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan in 2004, working stints in the general crimes and narcotics units. But Mr. Brodsky made his mark in the securities fraud section as a crucial part of the team that has secured more than 70 guilty pleas or convictions in the office’s broad crackdown on insider trading on Wall Street.
Before the Rajaratnam and Gupta trials, Mr. Brodsky won two insider trading convictions: securing guilty verdicts against Hafiz Muhammad Zubair Naseem, a former Credit Suisse investment banker, and Joseph Contoriis, a former money manager at the Jefferies Group.
Around the office, Mr. Brodsky was known as a workhorse. Colleagues marveled at his pulling all-nighters both before and during trials, breaking only for dinner at his nearby apartment with his two children and wife, a principal at a public school in the South Bronx.
But Mr. Brodsky was also a show horse. Fresh faced and animated, Mr. Brodsky endeared himself to juries with an impassioned, eloquent presentation. He could also be tenacious and combative in the courtroom, frequently butting heads with his adversaries. Mr. Rajaratnam’s defense lawyer, John M. Dowd, called him a crybaby; Gary P. Naftalis, the lawyer for Mr. Gupta, often complained about Mr. Brodsky’s aggressive tactics.
“Reed was one of the most dogged, tough and skilled prosecutors I knew at the U.S. attorneyâ! €™s offic! e,†said Mr. Streeter, now a partner at Dechert.
In Gibson Dunn, Mr. Brodsky joins a 1,100-lawyer firm known for its litigation prowess. His new partners will include the appellate lawyers Theodore B. Olson, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., and Miguel A. Estrada, as well as the trial lawyer Orin Snyder. Debra Wong Yang, a former United States attorney for the Central District of California, is a partner in the firm’s Los Angeles office.
The firm recently won a significant victory for its client Cablevision in a lawsuit against Dish Network, striking a $700 million settlement midtrial.
Gibson has several trials on the docket this coming year, includng defending Moody’s in a securities lawsuit brought by investors relating to the rating of a complex mortgage security, and representing Chevron in a 19-year legal fight related to an $18.2 billion judgment against the oil company by an Ecuadorean court.
Gibson Dunn is not going to waste any time in exploiting Mr. Brodsky’s advocacy skills, and will most likely use him on one of the firm’s coming trials, Mr. Mastro said.
“I fully expect Reed to come here and have an immediate impact,†Mr. Mastro said.
