Thomas M Buchanan

Tom Buchanan is the head of litigation in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. His practice focuses on complex civil and white-collar criminal litigation. He has tried over 30 jury trials and argued dozens of appeals in federal courts around the country. Along with Dan Webb, Mr. Buchanan represented former Congressman Dan Rostenkowski in his criminal prosecution in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He also served as co-counsel for the Commissioner of Baseball in his investigation of Pete Rose. Prior to going into private practice in 1984, Mr. Buchanan was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division. He worked in that office for about four years, during which time he handled hundreds of criminal investigations, including numerous high profile white-collar crimes involving bank fraud, procurement fraud, public corruption, espionage, bribery and others. He tried dozens of criminal jury trials before all of the judges of the court and argued numerous appeals to the Fourth Circuit. While in private practice, Mr. Buchanan has concentrated on complex commercial litigation and white-collar criminal defense work, including securities class action litigation, health care fraud, qui tam actions, SEC enforcement work, FCPA, and internal investigations for corporations and/or their Board of Directors or Audit Committees. He has represented numerous individuals and major corporations in litigation and internal investigations around the country. Some of Mr. Buchanan’s clients include: Verizon, Boeing, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Northrop Grumman, Morgan Stanley, Gateway, Regions Bank, AmSouth, Ford Motor Co., Morgan Keegan, ALAS, Legg Mason, Medquist, and Applied Card Bank. Recent representations by Mr. Buchanan include: obtaining a $35 million and a $371 million judgment for two failed financial institutions from the United States for breach of contract; successfully representing the chief investment officer of a major mutual fund in an investigation by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and the SEC; advising Medquist, a New Jersey corporation, in investigations by the DOJ and SEC, four class actions alleging securities fraud, and several qui tam actions; obtaining a multi-million dollar settlement for a qui tam relator against a major hospital based on allegations of fraud in billings and certifications relating to medical services; and successfully representing Morgan Keegan, a major brokerage company, in civil, criminal, administrative, and arbitration proceedings involving a national insider trading scandal. Mr. Buchanan heads the litigation practice group in the firm's Washington, D.C. office and serves as a member of the Executive Committee. Mr. Buchanan received a B.A., magna cum laude, from St. Louis University in 1976 and received a J.D. from Georgetown University Law School in 1980.