David A. O’Neil, a longtime federal prosecutor who helped the government negotiate one of the biggest corporate plea deals in American history, has landed in the private sector.
In an interview over the weekend, Mr. O’Neil said he would join the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton as a partner in its Washington office, where he will handle white-collar defense and cybersecurity issues. Debevoise, which caters to some of the biggest banks and corporations in the world, is expected to announce the hiring on Monday.
“They’ve got a legendary white-collar practice, and it’s an exciting place to make my home as a law firm partner,” said Mr. O’Neil, 41, the latest prosecutor to file through the revolving door between government and the defense bar.
Mr. O’Neil — who as acting head of the Justice Department’s criminal division helped extract an $8 billion plea deal from BNP Paribas, the French bank accused of doing business with Iran — will join Debevoise two years after the firm lost two top litigators to the Obama administration. Mary Jo White left Debevoise to become chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, while Andrew J. Ceresney, one of her top lieutenants, became the commission’s enforcement director.
In hiring Mr. O’Neil, Debevoise did not seek a replacement so much as a new direction. The firm asked him to expand its white-collar practice in Washington, in part by identifying other seasoned prosecutors and defense lawyers who might join the office.
“Dave is not the last step in this process,” said Bruce E. Yannett, chairman of the firm’s white-collar and regulatory defense group. “In some ways he’s the first.”
The move reflects a new reality in the white-collar world.
Wall Street banks, once the domain of prosecutors in Manhattan, increasingly are caught in the cross hairs of regulators and prosecutors in Washington as well.
The Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington orchestrated many of the biggest Wall Street settlements in recent memory, including a crackdown on interest rate manipulation and money laundering.
The higher profile has turned the criminal division into a steppingstone to lucrative law firm partnerships. And law firms are lining up to woo the prosecutors — and pay them up to a few million dollars a year.
Covington & Burling hired three senior criminal division prosecutors. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett recently recruited Jeffrey Knox, the former head of the criminal division’s fraud section. And Davis Polk hired Neil MacBride, a Justice Department official in Washington who also was the United States attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Amid the scramble, Debevoise has sought to distinguish itself with a cybersecurity practice. Recent hacking incidents, most notably at Sony Pictures, have shaken the corporate world and prompted law firms to expand their focus on the field.
Mr. O’Neil, who will incorporate cybersecurity issues into his practice, began his prosecutorial career as an assistant United States attorney in Manhattan. He later joined the solicitor general’s office, where he helped handle the government’s effort to uphold the 24-year sentence of Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron.
Mr. O’Neil grew up in Madison, Wis., and Charlottesville, Va., where his father, Robert M. O’Neil, was president of the University of Wisconsin Systems and University of Virginia.
He graduated from Harvard Law School and, like his father, was a clerk on the United States Supreme Court. He worked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; his father, for Justice William J. Brennan Jr.