BSF Welcomes Former Senior DOJ Civil Division Litigation Leader Sarmad Khojasteh in New York

Boies Schiller Flexner LLP announced today that Sarmad Khojasteh, most recently deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division, has joined the firm's New York and Washington D.C. offices as a partner.

Sarmad will join the firm's global investigations & white collar defense and commercial litigation practices, bringing extensive experience handling business-critical crises, enforcement actions, congressional investigations, and complex commercial litigation matters.

"Sarmad brings a deep understanding of how the government builds and pursues cases and strong knowledge of current enforcement priorities, both of which will serve our clients well," said Matthew L. Schwartz, Chairman of Boies Schiller Flexner and co-leader of the global investigations and white collar defense practice. "His experience as both strategic counsel and a trusted courtroom lawyer - both at the DOJ and before that for many years in private practice - adds to our roster of experienced first-chair trial lawyers as well."

During his tenure at the Justice Department, Sarmad served as deputy assistant attorney general for Special Litigation and for the Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch. He supervised federal prosecutors handling significant criminal and civil investigations, enforcement actions and affirmative litigation involving food, drugs, medical devices, tobacco products, consumer goods, social media, internet commerce, and marketing practices. He also led high-profile litigation involving administration officials and priorities and prepared senior government officials to testify before Congress, in court, and in depositions.

His work included spearheading nationwide enforcement actions against illicit vaping products, negotiating major Controlled Substances Act and False Claims Act opioid-related settlements, overseeing the largest ever criminal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act resolution against a leading global online marketplace, the largest ever Children Online Privacy Protection Act resolution against a leading social media company, and leading litigation challenging one of the Department of Justice's most closely watched merger approvals.

"Clients today increasingly face multifront, existential challenges to their businesses, with overlapping and cascading government investigations, state and federal regulatory litigation, and private litigation. That reality requires strategic counsel who can advance the client's objectives and anticipate challenges from every angle," said Sarmad. "For this reason, it was critical to me to join a firm whose identity is built on elite trial work, crisis management, and high-stakes litigation.

"Adversaries - whether they be government regulators, congressional investigators or private litigants - know that lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner will put them through their paces, fiercely advance their client's legal interests within the bounds of the law, and try a case when a matter demands it."

Before entering government, Sarmad spent nearly 20 years as a commercial litigation partner at two global law firms. He handled credit, contract, fraud, fiduciary duty and trade secret matters in federal and state courts and in arbitration, for clients in financial services, real estate, insurance, pharmaceuticals, technology, media, and manufacturing. He has won bench trials and arbitrations and has helped clients recover billions of dollars.

Sarmad's arrival follows the recent additions of Stuart McCommas, a litigation and investigations partner in Washington, D.C., and Christian Mammen, an intellectual property and AI litigator in San Francisco. Together, the hires continue BSF's growth across its global litigation platform.