Former Top Prosecutor In Austin John Bash Joins Global Law Firm

AUSTIN, TX — John F. Bash, the former U.S. Attorney for Western District of Texas encompassing Austin before stepping down earlier this month, has joined a noted Houston law firm, officials announced Friday.

Bash has joined the ranks of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP as partner, officials said in an advisory. Describing him as "an experienced U.S. Supreme Court advocate," officials said Bash joined the law firm as a partner, and will practice in Quinn Emanuel's offices in Houston and Washington, D.C.

“Few lawyers have the credentials that John Bash has," founder and managing partner John B. Quinn said in a prepared statement. "His experience in the U.S. Solicitor General’s office and as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas will be a big asset for our firm and our clients."

In his U.S. attorney role, Bash, 39, was the top federal prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department district that included Austin. He served in that role since December 2017 after being appointed by Donald Trump on recommendations of U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas. Bash oversaw some 300 staff members in a region encompassing 68 Texas counties, covering not only the capital city but San Antonio, Del Rio, El Paso, Fort Hood, Midland and others.

Related story: U.S. Attorney John Bash Resigns, Takes Private Sector Job

His profile was raised locally during his handling of the Austin serial bombings case that paralyzed the city in March 2018. During that time, Bash assisted local and county prosecutors investigating the case marked by random attacks on residents. The case came to an end when the suspect killed himself as police closed in but not before two people were killed and others injured by explosive parcels delivered to their homes.

At Quinn Emanuel, officials said, Bash’s practice will focus on appellate matters, internal investigations, patent law, and energy regulation. From 2017 to 2020, Bash led one of the busiest U.S. Attorney’s offices in the country, covering a vast swath of Texas that includes Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, and Waco, as well as the oil-and-gas rich Permian Basin region. He oversaw thousands of criminal and civil cases, and managed a workforce of over 300 people.

“I am thrilled to join Quinn Emanuel, the greatest litigation firm in the world,” Bash said in a prepared statement. “The firm has the most dynamic collection of trial lawyers in America, and there is no more dynamic business environment than the state of Texas. It’s a perfect match, and I’m excited to get started.”

Since its opening in 2014, officials said, Quinn Emanuel’s Houston office has grown to 12 lawyers and won widespread recognition for its work in Texas and throughout the southern and western U.S. In 2018, the firm earned notice from Texas Lawyer and the Houston Chronicle after winning a $622 million arbitration award for Vantage Deepwater against Petrobras. The case arose from an eight-year contract regarding an oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2009.

As U.S. Attorney, Bash led his office through significant multi-agency investigations and other high-profile matters, the law firm's officials added. Those efforts included identifying and stopping the bomber who terrorized Austin in the spring of 2018; convicting a Texas state senator for his participation in fraud and bribery schemes; obtaining the nation’s first temporary restraining order against individuals peddling a bogus COVID-19 vaccine; and convicting and entering into a civil settlement with a government subcontractor for a bribery scheme involving contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2019, officials noted, Bash secured 60-year sentences for two of the worst serial child molesters in Texas history, and throughout his tenure he prioritized putting child abusers behind bars through the Project Safe Childhood program. Bash also implemented a nationally recognized program to reduce gun violence in Central Texas, according to the advisory, and earlier this year he indicted the domestic terrorist who murdered 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso on one hundred counts of hate crimes and other federal offenses.

During his tenure as U.S. Attorney, Bash was appointed to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, as well as the Advisory Committee’s subcommittees for white-collar crime, national security, and the border. He also represented the Department of Justice on trips to Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, where he conferred with law enforcement counterparts on strategies for combatting transnational crime and protecting Central American migrants from exploitation.

Before his appointment as U.S. Attorney, Bash served in the White House as an Associate Counsel to the President and in the Solicitor General’s Office as an Assistant to the Solicitor General. In the latter role, he argued ten cases before the Supreme Court, briefed twenty Supreme Court cases on the merits, and filed certiorari-stage briefs in over one hundred cases. His practice in the Solicitor General’s Office focused on national security, criminal law, energy regulation, taxation, intellectual property, employee benefits, and federal preemption.

As a young lawyer, he served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin
Scalia and to then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Bash earned an A.B. summa cum laude from Harvard University and a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

About Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP

Quinn Emanuel is a 800+ lawyer business litigation firm — the largest in the world devoted solely to business litigation and arbitration with 23 global office locations. Firm lawyers have tried over 2,300 cases, winning 88 percent of them. When representing defendants, officials said, Quinn Emanuel’s trial experience gets better settlements or defense verdicts. When representing plaintiffs, Quinn Emanuel lawyers have won over $70 billion in judgments and settlements.

Quinn Emanuel has also obtained five 9-figure jury verdicts, 43 settlements in the nine figures and another 19 among 10-figure settlements. FTI Consulting named Quinn Emanuel the biggest litigation firm in the world. The American Lawyer named Quinn Emanuel the top IP litigation firm in the U.S. and the firm as one of the top six commercial litigation firms in the country. Quinn Emanuel was voted six times as one of the four “most feared” firms by General Counsels at Fortune 500 companies — the lawyers they “least like to see” on the other side.

The UK legal periodical The Lawyer named the law firm “International Firm of the Year.” Law360 selected it as Antitrust, Appellate, Banking, Class Action, Insurance, Product Liability, IP, White Collar, and Trials “Practice Groups of the Year.” Managing IP twice recognized the firm as having the “Best ITC Litigation Practice” bestowing it with the “Patent Contentious West” award. Legal Business has named it “U.S. Law Firm of the Year” three times, and the German offices have been named both IP Litigation and Patent Litigation Firm of the Year by JUVE, Germany’s most prestigious legal publication.

More accolades include the firm's naming by Global Investigations Review, a leading legal periodical covering global white-collar investigations, as the “Most Impressive Investigations Practice of the Year.” Moreover, Global Arbitration Review named the firm the 11th best arbitration practice in the world.

Further information is available at www.quinnemanuel.com.

This article originally appeared on the Austin Patch