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1050 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-5306 USA
Michael S. Diamant is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is a member of the White Collar Defense and Investigations Practice Group, and serves on the firm’s Finance Committee. His practice focuses on white collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and corporate compliance.
Michael has been recognized as one of the leading U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) experts in the United States by Chambers USA nationwide (2016-2023) and Chambers Global (2017-2023). He has also been recognized in The Best Lawyers® in America for work in Criminal Defense: White-Collar (2021-2024). Who’s Who Legal named Michael to its “Investigations Guide” (2019, 2022-2023), Thought Leaders: USA list (2023-2024), Thought Leaders: Global Investigations Review (2022-2023) and to its “Future Leaders: Investigations” list (2018, 2020). He was selected to Benchmark Litigation’s “40 & Under Hot List” (2016-2018, 2020) and previously as a “Future Litigation Star” (2016, 2019) and “Rising Star” (2016). Michael was also named to Global Investigation Review’s “40 Under 40” list (2014, 2017), and named to Law360’s “Rising Stars” for White Collar (2017).
Michael has broad white collar defense experience representing corporations and corporate executives facing criminal and regulatory charges. He has represented clients in an array of matters, including accounting and securities fraud, antitrust violations, and environmental crimes, before law enforcement and regulators, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Michael also has managed numerous internal investigations for publicly traded corporations and conducted fieldwork in nineteen different countries on five continents. In addition to his U.S. government-facing work, Michael has extensive World Bank Group enforcement experience, working on behalf of clients under investigation by the World Bank Integrity Vice Presidency and assisting companies already subject to World Bank sanction.
In his FCPA practice, Michael regularly conducts internal investigations for corporations regarding possible anti-bribery violations and assists them in complying with government subpoenas and negotiating settlements with enforcement agencies. He also routinely advises corporations on the adequacy of the design and implementation of their corporate ethics and compliance programs. This has included extensive work on all programmatic elements, including whistleblowing and investigative procedures, codes of conduct, expense approval and reimbursement processes, and oversight and governance functions, among many others. Michael has designed entire anti-bribery compliance programs for Fortune 100 corporations. He also frequently conducts FCPA training for in-house counsel, corporate executives, and line employees. And he has served as a faculty member for the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association’s Global Law School.
Representative public engagements handled by Michael include the following:
Michael’s academic publications include the following:
Michael’s notable professional publications include the following:
Select external speaking engagements that featured Michael include the following:
Michael clerked for the Honorable Fortunato P. Benavides of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is a 2003 magna cum laude graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif. At Georgetown, he served as Senior Articles & Notes Editor of the American Criminal Law Review and authored the article on the False Claims Act for the Seventeenth Survey of White Collar Crime, 39 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 491 (2002). In 2000, Michael received his Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service magna cum laude from Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Georgetown University - 2003 Juris Doctor
Georgetown University - 2000 Bachelor of Science
District of Columbia Bar
Virginia Bar