Emmet T. Flood

Emmet Flood has served in two administrations as Counsel to the President, Deputy Counsel to the President and Special Counsel to the President.  In the last 25 years, he has counseled many senior government officials while in and out of government and has represented central figures in nearly every major legal crisis arising in Washington D.C.

His clients have included individuals in both the public and private sectors, as well as corporations and professional services firms, in crisis situations and investigations. Among them are three Presidents, two Vice Presidents, public company CEOs, numerous Cabinet-level and senior White House officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations, and top-tier law, accounting and private equity firms.  He has successfully defended clients in four nationally significant Independent/Special Counsel investigations.

Emmet has advised CEOs and other business executives from the defense, energy, entertainment and other sectors in matters involving the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, state attorneys general and other investigative/regulatory entities.  He has represented two of the Big Four accounting firms in dozens of professional liability matters and investigations relating to tax advice and accounting services, as well as several leading U.S. law firms in professional liability matters.  And he has represented numerous companies in Congressional investigations, including clients in the defense, banking, pharmaceutical, technology and energy sectors, an Ivy League university, and many individuals including cabinet-level officials of both parties.

Complementing the broad perspective on the federal government acquired during his terms of White House service, Emmet’s private sector work includes white collar matters with federal grand juries, federal agency investigations and agency inspectors general.  It also includes representing clients in matters involving the Departments of State, Treasury, Interior and Labor as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, the Office of Special Counsel, the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, NASA, and other independent federal agencies.

Emmet graduated from the University of Dallas, magna cum laude, in 1978, then spent a year teaching English in a Dallas high school before enrolling in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1986. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Wesleyan University, he entered Yale Law School, where he was Executive Committee Coordinator of Volume 100 of the Yale Law Journal.  Emmet clerked for Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court of the United States before joining Williams & Connolly in 1994.