Brandon L. Van Grack

Brandon L. Van Grack co-chairs Morrison Foerster’s National Security and Crisis Management groups. His practice focuses on investigations, criminal defense, and compliance matters involving export controls and sanctions, foreign investment, and cyber incidents. Brandon’s arrival to the firm follows more than a decade of service at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), where he held multiple senior positions. In those positions, he helped manage the U.S. government’s tools to address perceived national security threats in China and Russia, oversaw every criminal investigation involving sanctions and export controls, and was Chief of DOJ’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit.

Brandon’s leadership and breadth of national security experience offers clients in the financial services, technology, artificial intelligence, defense, media, and communications sectors unmatched insider enforcement perspective across the entire national security landscape, including sanctions, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), export control, cybersecurity matters, and FARA.

Investigations & White Collar Defense 

At the DOJ, Brandon led and supervised some of the government’s most significant corporate investigations and resolutions across the national security spectrum. As Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and a Trial Attorney in the Counterintelligence & Export Control Section, he worked on the resolution of almost every significant corporate matter pertaining to export control and sanctions violations in the last decade and is one of the few attorneys to have managed the DOJ’s Voluntary Self‑Disclosure Program for export control and sanctions violations. As Chief of the FARA Unit, he directed scores of investigations of companies for acting as unregistered foreign agents. A selection of Brandon’s investigation & white collar defense experience includes:

• Obtained closure letter from DOJ for Cole Engineering Services, a subsidiary of By Light Professional IT Services LLC, less than six months after federal agents executed a search warrant at the company as part of a DOJ investigation.
• Obtained declination from DOJ’s Criminal Fraud Section and United States Attorney’s Office for a prominent advertising and marketing agency concerning allegations that the company insiders improperly obtained and used Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds.

Sanctions, Export Control, & Foreign Investment

As Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Brandon oversaw every criminal investigation involving export control and sanctions and led the DOJ’s response to the Obama Administration’s rollback of sanctions targeting Iran—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As a Trial Attorney, he prosecuted more than 30 export control and sanctions cases, including first-ever cases involving North Korea, weapons of mass destruction, and the Atomic Energy Act. In the first Trump Administration, Brandon led DOJ’s review of transactions involving foreign influence before CFIUS and Team Telecom; he also managed the DOJ’s review of transactions before CFIUS during the Obama Administration. A selection of Brandon’s sanctions, export control, & foreign investment experience includes: