Patrick O’Donnell

Patrick O’Donnell is a partner with the firm of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP, where his practice focuses on government enforcement matters, particularly white-collar criminal defense, and complex civil litigation.

His enforcement practice includes both civil and white-collar criminal investigations and prosecutions.  His clients have included private companies and individual executives, a university, a Congressman, and other public officials.  He has represented those clients in a wide variety of substantive cases, including matters focused on the False Claims Act, tax evasion, “off-label” use of pharmaceuticals, antitrust, securities fraud, bribery, extortion, environmental crimes, accounting fraud, and public corruption – particularly the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Working with the firm’s telecommunications practice, O’Donnell has also guided communications companies in responding to federal regulatory investigations, including several investigations involving the FCC’s universal-service subsidy program.  Mr. O’Donnell also has extensive experience with controversies related to complex loan-securitization processes and the mortgage market.

He has worked adversely or cooperatively with a wide variety of enforcement authorities — U.S. Attorneys’ offices, the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. Congress, the New York Attorney General, the SEC, the FCC, FHFA, and other federal administrative agencies.

Mr. O’Donnell’s experience in complex civil litigation includes winning the vacatur of a judgment and dismissal of a case against a nation state on grounds of sovereign immunity and summary judgment for a major international consumer-goods maker in a nationwide class-action antitrust case.  Mr. O’Donnell also works closely with the firm’s telecommunications practice in cases involving the communications-technology industry, where his past successes include the dismissal of a multi-million dollar federal suit for telephone access charges.

Mr. O’Donnell’s practice includes a particular focus on international matters.  He is an active member of an international consortium of lawyers and has defended a number of foreign individuals against attempts by the United States to enforce its domestic criminal law extraterritorially.  O’Donnell has also represented a foreign sovereign and foreign multinational companies in complex federal civil litigation.

For his pro bono service, Mr. O’Donnell defends indigent clients in “blue collar” criminal matters and low-income tenants fighting eviction in landlord-tenant cases.

Before becoming a lawyer, Mr. O’Donnell worked on the staffs of two U.S. Senators and served as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Treasury Department.