Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney To Join Kendall Brill

LOS ANGELES – (April 7, 2016) – Robert Edward Dugdale, a top-ranking veteran federal prosecutor with extensive trial experience, will be joining the Los Angeles-based Kendall Brill & Kelly law firm as a partner on May 2, expanding and enhancing the firm’s white collar practice and its litigation expertise.

Dugdale is the chief assistant U.S. attorney for trials, integrity and professionalism at the United States Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California (USAO), where he has served more than 19 years as a trial attorney and supervisor of some of the most significant cases in the USAO’s criminal, civil, national security and tax divisions.  He has been the lead attorney or associate counsel on more than 25 trials, including a sizable number of the most complex and significant criminal prosecutions brought by the USAO over the past two decades. He also has successfully argued in excess of 20 cases before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Dugdale has received numerous honors for his trial work.  He has been named a California Lawyer of the Year by California Lawyer magazine. He also received the Attorney General’s Award, which is the highest honor given to a Department of Justice (DOJ) employee, and he has twice been honored with the DOJ’s Director’s Award, the second highest honor given to a DOJ employee.

“Bob will be a great addition to Kendall Brill & Kelly because he is a highly respected trial lawyer who has had an extraordinary career successfully prosecuting some of the biggest federal cases in the region and the nation,” said Richard Kendall, managing partner of Kendall Brill & Kelly. “Our clients will benefit from Bob’s extensive litigation experience, his in-depth knowledge of the federal system and his proven ability to manage complex cases.”

Dugdale has served in several leadership positions since joining the USAO in 1997.  For five years, he served as the chief and deputy chief of the Violent and Organized Crime Section, where he oversaw an anti-gang program lauded by the DOJ and hailed by many as a major contributing factor to a precipitous drop in gang crime that occurred in Los Angeles County under his watch.

In addition to his current position within the USAO’s Executive Management Team, Dugdale also served as chief of the Criminal Division from 2010 to 2015, where he oversaw the work of over 200 federal prosecutors and a vast array of significant cases involving national security issues; all manner of white collar fraud, including securities fraud, investment fraud, health care fraud and large-scale mortgage fraud; cybercrime; money laundering; public corruption; organized crime; domestic and international drug trafficking; violent crime, and environmental crime.  He also served on several prominent committees and working groups within the DOJ that included other high-ranking veteran federal prosecutors from across the nation and that spawned a number of policy recommendations subsequently adopted by the U.S. Attorney General.

“I am looking forward to working with Kendall Brill & Kelly’s outstanding group of trial lawyers and joining a team that is known for extraordinary advocacy and, in particular, exceptional trial experience and outcomes,” said Dugdale. “After 19 years of public service, I’m also pleased to be joining a firm that has a strong social consciousness as evidenced by its pro bono work to desegregate the Arizona prison system and by the contributions the firm made in helping to overturn Proposition 8.”

During his tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the significant cases Dugdale supervised included: the investigation into the November 2014 computer intrusion into Sony Pictures Entertainment attributed to the North Korean government; the prosecution of 19 members of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department stemming from civil rights abuses and corruption involving the L.A. County jail system; operations targeting trade-based money laundering occurring in the downtown Fashion District that led to the seizure of over $150 million in criminal proceeds and some of the largest seizures of bulk cash in the history of American law enforcement; several high-profile insider-trading cases, including an insider trading case charging a KPMG partner who headed that firm’s Pacific Southwest Audit Practice Group; the largest organized crime prosecution targeting a Eurasian criminal enterprise in DOJ history, and investment fraud cases involving combined victim loses that well-exceeded $2 billion.

Dugdale is a 1990 graduate of Northwestern University and a 1993 graduate of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.