Morrison & Foerster, a leading global law firm, is pleased to announce that Brian K. Kidd has joined the firm as a partner in its Investigations + White Collar Defense Group in Washington, D.C. Mr. Kidd joins Morrison & Foerster from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), where he most recently served as Chief of the Market Integrity and Major Frauds (MIMF) Unit in the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, having joined the DOJ in 2009. In this senior role, Mr. Kidd supervised a team of roughly 40 federal prosecutors investigating and prosecuting complex securities, commodities, and other major corporate fraud cases. Mr. Kidd oversaw cross-border and corporate prosecutions involving market manipulation, spoofing, insider trading, money laundering, bribery, cryptocurrency, accounting, and procurement fraud.
During his tenure as Chief, Mr. Kidd oversaw some of the most significant corporate resolutions in the DOJ, including resolutions involving some of the country’s largest financial institutions, healthcare companies, government contractors, and automotive companies. Mr. Kidd also served as Chair of DOJ’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Working Group, where he worked closely with senior leaders at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Federal Reserve, as well as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and Serious Fraud Office.
Mr. Kidd’s arrival follows the addition of a number of top former U.S. government and enforcement agency officials in recent years and reinforces Morrison & Foerster’s strategic commitment to further expanding its world-class global investigations and multijurisdictional white collar defense capabilities, which are increasingly in demand across the firm’s global offices.
Particularly, Mr. Kidd’s arrival underscores the continued growth of the firm’s Investigations + White Collar Defense practice in the last several years. Prior to his joining Morrison & Foerster, the firm significantly expanded its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), U.S. sanctions, national security, and other white collar capabilities with the addition of more than a dozen former senior U.S. government officials. Notably, he is the seventh former senior DOJ official to join the D.C. office, following in the footsteps of Charles Duross, James Koukios, Lisa Phelan, John Carlin, David Newman, and Robert Litt, as well as former director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), John Smith.
“Brian brings deep insights into government investigations and enforcement in cutting-edge areas—such as cryptocurrency, spoofing, and market manipulation, among other data-analytics-driven areas of investigation—that will become an increasing focus of U.S. enforcement for the foreseeable future,” said James Koukios, co-chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Securities Litigation, Enforcement, and White Collar Defense Group and global co-head of the FCPA + Anti-Corruption practice. “Now with three former senior managers from the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, we offer our clients unmatched insight into DOJ’s pre-eminent corporate prosecution section. Brian’s work with U.S. Attorney’s Offices across the United States and with foreign counterparts around the globe will also enable Brian to guide our clients through complex, multijurisdictional investigations.”
Since 2009, Mr. Kidd has served in various positions at the Justice Department. Prior to his role as Chief of the MIMF Unit in the Fraud Section, he served in various positions in the Fraud Section and was previously a trial attorney in the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division and an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico.
“I am excited to join Morrison & Foerster’s well established and highly respected team of government investigations and enforcement litigators,” said Mr. Kidd. “I look forward to working closely with this incredible group and to put my experience to work assisting the firm’s clients with their legal and compliance matters.”
Mr. Kidd earned his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and his B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Mr. Kidd’s practice is limited to federal matters; he is admitted in New York only.
