Robert S Khuzami

Robert Khuzami is a partner in Kirkland's Government & Internal Investigations Practice Group.

Prior to joining Kirkland, Rob served for four years (2009-13) as Director of Enforcement for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Rob assumed the position in the wake of the financial crisis, and served during the passage and implementation of portions of the Dodd-Frank Act. As Director, he supervised the collective efforts of approximately 1,300 attorney investigators, accountants, market experts, trial attorneys and others. While Rob served as Director, the Enforcement Division designed and adopted the most significant restructuring in its 40-year history, and filed cases in record numbers, many of which involved highly complex and emerging financial markets, products and transactions.

As Director, Rob served as co-chair of two federal-state working groups that were part of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, created by President Obama to prosecute misconduct arising out of the financial crisis. Rob testified on 12 occasions before House and Senate congressional oversight and other committees.
From 2002 to 2009, Robert worked at Deutsche Bank AG in New York, serving first as Global Head of Litigation and Regulatory Investigations (2002-04) and then as General Counsel for the Americas (2004-09.)

From 1990 to 2002, Rob served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, where he tried ten criminal trials to verdict. For three of those years, he served as Chief of that office's Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, where he prosecuted and supervised cases involving complex securities and white-collar crime.

While in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Rob was a member of the prosecution team in United States v. Abdel Rahman, et al., the then-largest terrorism trial in U.S. history that resulted in the conviction of Omar Ahmed Ali Abdel Rahman, and nine co-defendants for operating an international terrorist organization responsible for, among other things, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the planned simultaneous bombings of various New York City landmarks, including the United Nations Building and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels.

Other Distinctions

• No. 40 in "The 100 Most Powerful People in Finance," Worth (2012)
• One of the "Power 30," SmartMoney(2011)
• One of the "Names We Need to Know,"Forbes Magazine (2011)
• One of The American Lawyer's Newsmakers (2010)
• One of 20 "Champions and Visionaries" The National Law Journal (2010)
• No. 34 in the "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics," Ethisphere Magazine (2009)
• Henry L. Stimson Award for Outstanding Public Service (2001)
• Federal Law Enforcement Foundation's Federal Prosecutor Award (1997)
• U.S. Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Service (1996)