Another Big Day For Raj Rajaratnam Lawyer John Dowd

As the long-awaited criminal trial of hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam (pictured) begins today in Manhattan federal court, we thought you might want to know a little bit about Rajaratnam’s lead lawyer, John M. Dowd. 

Dowd is a partner with the mega-firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. At the firm, he is co-leader of the firm’s white collar defense and corporate investigations practice. His law firm bio says that Dowd has prosecuted and defended significant criminal matters at trial and in parallel proceedings before Congress and regulatory agencies for more than 30 years. His practice focuses on the trial of complex civil and criminal cases.
 
The bio notes that Dowd is “noted for his representation of a U.S. district judge, a former U.S. attorney and two U.S. senators” – including John McCain in connection with the so-called “Keating 5” Senate Ethics Investigation. Dowd also represented Arizona Governor Fife Symington in a bank fraud trial in the late 1990s; Symington was convicted on seven of 23 counts, but later was pardoned by President Clinton.
 
One of the matters for which Dowd is most well known is the “Dowd Report” about Pete Rose he prepared on behalf Major League Baseball; the report is available at www.thedowdreport.com.
 
Before entering private practice, Dowd was a trial attorney in the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in the Criminal Division. He tried the first prosecution of the federal RICO statute in United States v. Parness. At the request of the attorney general, he also supervised an internal investigation of the FBI and the investigation of Congressman Daniel Flood of Pennsylvania.
 
Dowd received his A.B. cum laude from St. Bernard College in 1963 and his J.D. from Emory University in 1965. He was honored by Emory Law as one of three recipients of the 2008 Emory Law Distinguished Alumni Award.
 
The Rajaratnam case may be Dowd's most difficult case so far.