Henry Asbill

Hank Asbill, a partner in the Washington, D.C. and New York offices of Buckley LLP, provides clients with more than four decades of exemplary jury trial and appellate experience. Over the course of his career, he has successfully defended corporate and individual clients in a wide range of criminal and civil matters in more than 100 trials and 30 appeals in federal and state courts across the country. His work includes white collar defense, securities litigation, complex civil litigation, and antitrust and corporate investigations.

Mr. Asbill, whom Chambers recognizes as “a super stellar” attorney in White Collar Crime Litigation, received the White Collar Defense Lawyer of the Year Award in 2015 from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has also been recognized by Benchmark Litigation in 2019 as one of the top 100 trial lawyers in the U.S., as well as a top practitioner in White Collar, Antitrust, Appellate, General Commercial, and Securities Litigation; The Legal 500 (Corporate Investigations and White-collar Criminal Defense); Best Lawyers in America (Criminal Defense: White Collar, Commercial Litigation, Litigation: Regulatory Enforcement, Bet the Company Litigation); Euromoney’s World’s Leading White Collar Crime Lawyers; Washingtonian magazine; and Super Lawyers. He was profiled in The National Law Journal’s "Winning" report featuring the nation’s top litigators and SmartCEO magazine called him a "go to" lawyer for white-collar criminal defense and commercial litigation.

Some of his more noteworthy matters include:

• Defended former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, whose public corruption convictions were unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the government overreached in defining when a public servant’s actions are “official acts”
   
• Represented on appeal Bridget Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose trial conviction was recently reversed in a unanimous decision by the US Supreme Court
   
• Defended Mahmood Karzai, the brother of Hamid Karzai, former President of Afghanistan, in a federal grand jury investigation in the Southern District of New York, regarding alleged tax, money laundering, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation, that concluded without any charges being brought
   
• Achieved an appellate victory in defending the estate of Michael Jackson and MJJ Productions, Inc., when the D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling that what the plaintiff referred to as “newly discovered evidence” was not admissible
   
• Won successive criminal and civil jury trials involving securities-fraud charges brought against a former AOL vice president by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission
   
• Secured an acquittal on all counts for a lead defendant in a RICO case in the longest criminal trial in federal court history

Mr. ​Asbill is a master of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, past president and fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, member of the New York Council of Defense Lawyers, past president of the D.C. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and former two-term director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

A frequent lecturer on trial work, Mr. Asbill is a former adjunct professor of criminal and civil trial practice at Georgetown University Law Center and a former instructor at the Federal Judicial Center training program for federal district judges.

He received his J.D. from Georgetown University and his A.B. from Princeton University.