Devin Allan Debacker

Devin DeBacker is an attorney providing strategic counseling, comprehensive representation, and crisis management. He helps clients navigate high-stakes matters spanning complex litigation; congressional, government, and internal investigations; regulatory issues; and appeals and critical legal issues. Colleagues and clients have described Devin as a “go-to lawyer on important matters,” “extremely talented,” “a work horse,” and “pragmatic."

Devin recently served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House Counsel, the Attorney General, and Executive Branch agencies on the most challenging legal issues facing the government. Before that, he was Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to the President in the Office of the White House Counsel. While in the Executive Branch, Devin counseled White House advisers, National Security Council staff, and agency general counsel on legal issues regarding China, economic national security (e.g., sanctions, international trade), cross-border transactions (e.g., digital services taxes, CFIUS), telecommunications (e.g., 5G), presidential emergency powers, congressional oversight, and administrative law. He also handled investigations into classified, sensitive, and high-profile matters.

Before government, Devin was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he represented corporate plaintiffs and defendants in complex and bet-the-company litigation and appeals. Devin handled nationwide and statewide class actions, federal multidistrict and coordinated litigation, mass torts, parallel litigation across more than a dozen jurisdictions, and cases with billions of dollars at stake. He has also represented clients at the certiorari and merits stages in over a half-dozen cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and has briefed more than 15 appeals in most of the U.S. Courts of Appeals and several state courts.

While at Kirkland, Devin had an active pro bono practice. For example, he secured nationwide class certification for former unaccompanied immigrant children challenging the federal government’s detention policies and defeated the government’s motion to dismiss (Ramirez v. ICE (D.D.C. 2018)); persuaded the Supreme Court to review and hold unconstitutional the federal government’s taking of farmers’ raisin crops without fair compensation (Horne v. USDA (2015)); and convinced the D.C. Circuit to reverse a criminal conviction based on the government’s failure to disclose exculpatory eyewitness testimony (United States v. Pasha (D.C. Cir. 2015)).