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Eric Vandevelde is a litigation partner in Gibson Dunn’s Los Angeles office. He is co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence practice group and a member of the firm’s White Collar, Privacy & Cybersecurity, and Intellectual Property practice groups. As a former federal prosecutor who previously supervised the Cyber & IP Crimes section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California, Eric has significant first-chair trial experience, both while at the DOJ and in the private sector. He has a deep technical background, with a degree in computer science from Stanford and having worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley and Latin America. He has repeatedly been ranked by Chambers and recognized by Super Lawyers and the Daily Journal, including as one of the Top 20 Cyber/Artificial Intelligence lawyers in California.
Eric has a broad practice—handling criminal and civil trials, internal investigations, enforcement matters, advisory work for boards and management, and product counseling—but nearly all of his matters lie at the intersection of technology and the law, and involve cutting edge issues in AI, cryptocurrency, data privacy, cybersecurity, biotech, fintech, gaming, and software. He has also represented clients in some of the highest profile, highest stakes cases in the country concerning government demands for personal data and technical assistance in connection with criminal and national security-related investigations.
Representative criminal and regulatory investigations matters:
Representative litigation matters:
AI / Cybersecurity / Privacy matters:
Across a wide range of industries, including software, hardware, social media, cloud and other online services, retail and luxury goods, health care, biotech and other life sciences, telecom, transportation, and private equity, Eric has helped numerous clients identify and manage AI, cybersecurity, and privacy risks:
From 2007 to 2014, Eric served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. He was Deputy Chief of the Cyber & IP Crimes unit, supervising one of the nation’s largest teams of federal prosecutors dedicated to investigating and prosecuting computer hacking and intellectual property offenses. He was the lead prosecutor on numerous high-profile cyber-crime investigations, including cases involving corporate espionage, theft of trade secrets, APTs, botnets, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and other sophisticated cyberattacks by nation-state actors. Eric has handled the prosecution of several infamous hacking groups that infiltrated government and corporate servers around the world. He also successfully prosecuted numerous traditional white collar cases as part of the Major Frauds Section, including healthcare fraud, mortgage fraud, investment fraud, tax fraud, and government procurement fraud cases, as well as some of the largest Ponzi scheme cases in Southern California. For his work with the government, Eric received numerous awards and commendations from federal agencies, including the FBI, Secret Service, IRS, and U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Eric is an active member of the legal community and committed to pro bono work. He served as Co-Chair of the ABA White Collar Crime Committee for Southern California. He currently serves on the board of the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, which provides direct representation to survivors of domestic violence and families in crises, and he was previously a board member for the Federal Bar Association of Los Angeles. Eric graduated from UCLA School of Law, Order of the Coif. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable A. Howard Matz, United States District Judge, Central District of California.
University of California - Los Angeles - 2005 Juris Doctor
Stanford University - 1998 Bachelor of Science
California Bar