Bruce H. Searby
Bruce H. Searby is a litigator with broad white-collar criminal experience, and has successfully prosecuted and defended some of the most high-profile foreign and domestic bribery cases pursued by the federal government. He won one of the few Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases that has been tried to verdict before a jury. His background also includes high-stakes civil securities fraud and general commercial litigation. Bruce’s litigation experience has spanned from East Coast to West Coast, and from leading private law firms to the Department of Justice. Through his 25-year career, Bruce has won cases at all procedural stages from the pleadings through to trial and appeals. On June 2022, Bruce was ranked by Chambers and Partners for 2022 in White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. He has also recently obtained a full dismissal of a variety of serious federal criminal charges against an individual client. Specific matters are listed in the representative experience section for each practice area.
Mara Silver
Of Counsel
Mara Silver has deep experience in complex, high-stakes litigation and has served in all three branches of Mgovernment. As the Advising Attorney and Emergency Applications Clerk at the Supreme Court of the United States, she was the attorney for all emergency matters before the Court, briefing the justices and their staffs, while serving as the Court’s liaison with counsel in high-profile and time-sensitive cases. Previously, she was counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary for then-Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, advising on matters related to constitutional law, criminal justice, immigration, human rights, privacy, technology, and other issues. Mara was both a trial and an appellate attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she represented clients in trial and argued numerous appeals.
Mara has extensive expertise in strategic communications and crisis management. She served in the White House Office of Presidential Speechwriting, as Deputy Press Secretary for U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, and as the Manager of Press and Marketing for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.
Mara served as a law clerk to Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School, where she was an editor of the law review and graduated with academic distinction, and Northwestern University, where she graduated summa cum laude.
Nicole Ledesma
Associate Attorney
Nicole Ledesma is a US attorney with over seven years of legal and investigative experience. Ms. Ledesma’s career in the legal field began as a contractor for the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Unit at the U.S. Department of Justice and continued through a variety of roles including as a Law Clerk for the General Counsel’s Office for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for USAID. Ms. Ledesma has coordinated investigations and led strategic litigation techniques in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and the U.S. In 2017, Ms. Ledesma was awarded the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service for her contributions to one of the largest foreign bribery resolutions by the FCPA Unit at the Department of Justice. In 2021, Ms. Ledesma was selected as a Squire Patton Boggs Fellow in recognition of her commitment to public interest work.
Ms. Ledesma is fluent in English and Spanish and proficient in Portuguese.