PERSON: Tom Dupree / Thomas Dupree Jr.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

Partner

Thomas H. Dupree, Jr. Is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is a member of the firm’s litigation department and its Appellate and Constitutional Law practice group, and serves as the hiring partner for the D.C. office.

Mr. Dupree is an experienced trial and appellate advocate. He has argued more than 70 appeals in the federal courts, including in all 13 circuits as well as the United States Supreme Court. He has represented clients throughout the country in a wide variety of trial and appellate matters, including cases involving punitive damages, class actions, product liability, arbitration, intellectual property, employment, and constitutional challenges to federal and state statutes.

In 2007, Mr. Dupree was appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney General. He served in the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2007 to 2009, ultimately becoming the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General. In that capacity, he served as the division’s second-in-command, overseeing the more than 900 lawyers in the Civil Appellate, Commercial, Federal Programs and Torts branches, as well as the Office of Immigration Litigation and the Office of Consumer Litigation. Mr. Dupree was responsible for managing many of the government’s most significant cases involving regulatory, commercial, constitutional and national security matters on behalf of virtually all of the federal agencies, the White House, and senior federal officials. Before being named the division’s top deputy, Mr. Dupree ran its largest litigating Branch, managing a staff of 280 lawyers.

Chambers and Partners named Mr. Dupree one of the leading appellate lawyers in the United States in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. He received similar honors in 2010, when he was ranked as one of the top 10 appellate litigators under age 40 by Law360. In 2009, the National Law Journal and Legal Times selected him as one of the top 40 lawyers under 40 in Washington, D.C., as did Washingtonian magazine in 2006. Based on surveys of hundreds of corporate counsel, Mr. Dupree was named a “Client Service All-Star” by BTI Consulting Group in a 2013 report for his “overall legal prowess” and his “ability to deliver a plan of action that yields results.”

Legal Times has called Mr. Dupree “no stranger to high-profile work.” Among other things, he played a substantial role in the successful representation of George W. Bush before the United States Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, and represented Time Inc. And Time’s White House reporter Matthew Cooper in connection with the investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

In 2014, Mr. Dupree argued and won, by a unanimous 9-0 vote, a landmark personal jurisdiction case in the United States Supreme Court, Daimler AG v. Bauman. For this achievement, American Lawyer magazine named him Litigator of the Week, noting that he “won over both the liberal and conservative wings of the court.”

Other matters Mr. Dupree has handled include:

Persuading the Supreme Court to grant a petition for certiorari on behalf of a major automobile manufacturer and to vacate a $290 million punitive damage award, which had been the largest personal injury award ever affirmed on appeal in United States history.
Successfully representing the government before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a constitutional challenge to post-9/11 national security registration programs operated by the Department of Homeland Security.
Winning an appeal on behalf of Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a copyright and trademark case involving The New York Times #1 bestselling book Deceptively Delicious.
Successfully representing Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a federal lawsuit arising from the plaintiff’s fraudulent claim of a significant ownership stake in Facebook.
Successfully representing superagent Scott Boras in confidential baseball-related arbitrations.
Mr. Dupree appears frequently on national television as a legal analyst. He is a regular guest on Fox News Channel, and has appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” and “The Kelly File,” as well as on CNN’s “Situation Room” and C-Span’s “America & The Courts,” among other programs. He has also been quoted in numerous print publications, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and many others, discussing legal issues and developments. Mr. Dupree has also testified before Congress on constitutional and separation-of-powers issues, including the President’s authority to act through executive order.

Mr. Dupree graduated cum laude from Williams College, and with Honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as an Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

— gibsondunn.com