White-Collar Career Takes Off for Ex-Navy Pilot

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As a Navy officer, Thomas O’Brien spent much of his career flying F-14 Tomcats. In the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he indicted high-profile criminals and supervised their prosecution.

But with his move to Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP, O’Brien is entering new territory: big law.

O’Brien, who has been U.S. attorney for the Central District of California since 2007, will step down from his post Sept. 1. He will join Paul Hastings’ downtown L.A. office in early October as partner.

“I spoke to a number of firms, all of which greatly impressed me,” said O’Brien, who has never worked in private practice. “However, I felt the most comfortable with the opportunity at Paul Hastings and decided to work there.”

Paul Hastings significantly bolsters its white-collar presence in Los Angeles with the addition of O’Brien. The firm houses four other partners who work in the white-collar space, including well-known securities litigators William Sullivan and Thomas Zaccaro.

Rick Kolodny, a West L.A. legal recruiter who brokered O’Brien’s move to Paul Hastings, said the firm wanted an attorney with the ability to handle high-stakes matters, including internal investigations and regulatory issues.

O’Brien graduated from the Naval Academy, and served for 13 years as a Radar Intercept Officer before attending law school. He then became a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, where he served as chief of the criminal and civil rights divisions.

During his tenure as head of the second largest U.S. Attorney’s Office in the United States, O’Brien personally prosecuted the high-profile case against Lori Drew, whose role in a MySpace hoax led to the suicide of a 13-year-old suburban St. Louis girl. A federal jury in Los Angeles originally convicted Drew of three misdemeanor computer fraud counts, but a judge last month ordered her acquitted on the grounds that violating the Web site’s terms of use wasn’t a federal crime.

“I’ve been able to litigate and be a trial attorney for my entire career,” O’Brien said. “But now is the time to go and take on new challenges.”


Musical Chairs

When Channing Johnson decided to join Loeb & Loeb LLP’s Century City office, the entertainment attorney opted to join a firm familiar with L.A.’s business community.

“I started to yearn a bit for a law firm that had lawyers and a leadership who understood the middle-market corporate environment of Los Angeles,” Johnson said.

Johnson, who joined Loeb in early August as partner, was a founding attorney of the Century City office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.

He specializes in merger and acquisition deals and corporate finance work, and also handles corporate deals in the entertainment and media space with a focus on the music industry.


Breaking Off

Gladstone Michel Weisberg Willner & Sloane ALC may have a new name, but the faces practicing at the Marina del Rey law firm are still the same.

That’s because the 17 attorneys who established the Marina del Rey office of Berger Kahn PC formed Gladstone Michel at the beginning of August in order to divorce from Berger Kahn to avoid client conflicts.

Leon Gladstone, a founding partner at Berger Kahn, said prospective clients of Berger Kahn’s other California offices would often come to them seeking litigation against companies and individuals represented by the Marina del Rey office.

“The client conflicts started a discussion about whether we would be better off splitting and being two separate firms,” Gladstone said. “And it’s been a seamless transition.”

Gladstone represents insurance companies that cover film and television productions. Other attorneys at the firm specialize in an array of complex business issues, including real estate, labor and employment, and intellectual property matters.


Bankruptcy Expansion

Blank Rome LLP has continued its growth in Century City with the addition of bankruptcy attorney Sara Chenetz.

The Philadelphia law firm, which opened its Century City outpost in February, snagged Chenetz from the downtown L.A. office of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP. Blank Rome’s local office now houses eight attorneys.

The departure of Chenetz means that Sonnenschein Nath no longer has a bankruptcy practice in Los Angeles. Christopher Prince, the only other bankruptcy partner, is also

leaving the firm.

Chenetz, who joined Blank Rome on Aug. 5, specializes in representing debtors, lenders, bondholders, equity holders and vendors in bankruptcy matters.

Chenetz said she joined Blank Rome because she wanted the opportunity to help build an office from the ground up.

Blank Rome houses about 36 bankruptcy attorneys at offices in New York; Philadelphia; and Wilmington, Del.


Staff reporter Alexa Hyland can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 235.

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