Porter Wright adds legislative advocate, litigator Adrian Snead to growing Washington office
Porter Wright announces the continued expansion of its Washington, D.C., office with the addition of Adrian Snead as a partner.
Adrian counsels clients on government and regulatory challenges, complex litigation and emerging industries such as cloud computing and cannabis. He focuses on appropriations, emerging technology, homeland security, military and veterans affairs, privacy policy, and cannabis banking and reform. Adrian also advises and litigates complex business and contract disputes, conflicts with foreign sovereigns, white collar defense, and national security cases. He joins the Washington office just a month after the addition of appellate and regulatory litigator Shane Pennington.
“Adrian’s prominent experience in Washington, including in all three branches of government, and as in-house counsel to Amazon Web Services, complements our growing team and will be a tremendous asset to our clients,” shared Holly Kozlowski, partner-in-charge of Porter Wright’s Washington, D.C. office. “We are excited to work with Adrian and Shane as they expand the services we can offer and advance Porter Wright’s government advocacy and litigation presence in Washington.”
“It’s an exciting time as we expand our government affairs team in Washington,” said Scott North, chair of the firm’s Government and Regulatory Affairs practice group. “Adrian and Shane have the deep government experience needed to help our clients proactively address their most complex legislative and regulatory challenges.”
Adrian brings more than a decade of extensive experience in litigation, legislative process, political strategy, and policy development and analysis. His broad experience includes time as a U.S. Senate staffer, as a law clerk to the former Chief Judge of the Federal District Court for D.C., as an intern in the Obama White House, and as part of trial teams that won cases against the Republics of Guatemala and Iraq, and successfully represented three former CIA station chiefs in litigation concerning oil concessions in Iraq.
As former counsel and foreign policy advisor to U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Adrian handled portions of the Senator’s Appropriations and Banking committee assignments, serves as the Personal Representative of the Member (PRM) to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was Senator Merkley’s Military Legislative Assistant.
Adrian also served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where he held a Top Secret/SCI security clearance to handle national security cases. During law school, Adrian spent a year at the U.S. Department of Justice in both the Civil Rights and Criminal divisions, and was a White House intern during the Obama Administration, working in the Domestic Policy Council.
Adrian is a member of the Hispanic National Bar Association and the Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia. He received his law degree from The George Washington University Law School, which he attended on a full scholarship, and his undergraduate degree from The University of Texas at Austin, with high honors.
