“Brian Kidd is the go-to person for financial fraud matters.— Legal 500 Client Quote
Brian Kidd is a partner in Morrison Foerster’s Investigations + White Collar Defense Practice. His focus is on solving clients’ most difficult legal and regulatory challenges, often in the context of civil and criminal investigations and litigations. Brian has represented public and private companies and their executives in complex government-facing probes, which have resulted in favorable resolutions and declinations among other successes. He also represents boards of directors and companies in conducting complex internal investigations and compliance reviews. Brian regularly counsels his clients through sensitive matters, corporate crises, litigation, and other disputes involving U.S. federal and state law enforcement and regulatory agencies including the Department of Justice (DOJ), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Department of Education (DOE), District Attorney’s Offices, and state attorneys general, among others. Brian has served as first chair on over a dozen federal trials and is a member of the New York and Washington, D.C., bars.
Before joining MoFo, Brian served as chief of the Market Integrity and Major Frauds (MIMF) Unit of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section at DOJ. As chief, Brian supervised a team of roughly 40 federal prosecutors and oversaw the majority of all major fraud cases brought by DOJ during his tenure, with a special focus on investigating and prosecuting complex securities, commodities, and other major corporate fraud cases. Brian oversaw cross-border and corporate prosecutions involving market manipulation, spoofing, insider trading, money laundering, bribery, cryptocurrency, accounting, and procurement fraud. Brian also served as chair of DOJ’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Working Group, where he worked closely with senior leaders at the SEC, CFTC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Reserve.
Prior to his role as chief of the MIMF Unit, Brian served as an assistant chief of the MIMF Unit from January 2017 to May 2018 and as a trial attorney from October 2015 to January 2017. Prior to joining the Fraud Section, Brian was a trial attorney in the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division and an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico.