Brian

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Brad Brian

Munger, Tolles & Olson

Specialty: White-collar criminal defense

Law School: Harvard, 1977

As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, Brad Brian was a tough competitor on the baseball diamond. He was a member of the U.S. college all-star baseball team, played in the World Amateur Games, and was awarded a post-graduate scholarship to help finance his education at Harvard.

These days, Brian, 46, maintains that competitive streak, garnering impressive victories in complex civil and criminal cases involving major corporations.

He is best known for defending Thomas Spiegel, the former chairman of Columbia Savings & Loan, who in 1994 was sued by the U.S. government on 64 criminal counts of embezzlement, bank fraud, bribery and other offenses. A jury acquitted Spiegel on all counts after deliberating for only two hours. His highly publicized victory won him a spot on the National Law Journal’s list of the top 10 trial lawyers of 1994.

Brian also was one of the attorneys who represented Northrop Grumman after the U.S. government filed a criminal indictment charging the aerospace company with falsifying tests of its missiles. Northrop pleaded guilty to 18 counts and was fined $17 million, but the other charges were dismissed. As part of the plea agreement, the government also terminated a dozen other criminal investigations of Northrop.

Among his other victories, Brian successfully defended Southern California Edison on criminal environmental charges and PGP Industries against allegations that the company embezzled precious metals from its customers.

Before joining Munger, Tolles & Olson in 1981, he was an assistant United States attorney in Los Angeles for three years. He prosecuted complex cases involving allegations of fraud or other business crimes, racketeering and public corruption.

Rebecca Kuzins

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