Nick Hanna, who most recently served as United States Attorney for the Central District of California, is a litigation partner in Gibson Dunn’s Los Angeles office and co-chairs the firm’s global White Collar Defense and Investigations Practice Group.  Mr. Hanna’s practice focuses on representing corporations in high-stakes civil litigation, white collar crime, and regulatory and securities enforcement – including internal investigations, False Claims Act cases, special committee representations, compliance counseling and class actions.

From 2018-2021, Mr. Hanna served as United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, where he represented the United States in all criminal, civil, national security and tax matters within the district, an area encompassing seven counties and nearly half the state’s population.  In that capacity, Mr. Hanna led a team of over 280 Assistant U.S. Attorneys – the largest U.S. Attorney’s Office outside of Washington D.C. – and oversaw some of the most significant public corruption, fraud, money laundering, cybercrime, economic espionage, and civil rights cases in the country.

As U.S. Attorney, Mr. Hanna served for three years as the Chair of the White Collar Fraud Subcommittee of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, responsible for helping guide DOJ’s nationwide corporate enforcement strategy.  He also served as a member of the President’s Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud, and as a member of the Corporate Enforcement and Accountability Working Group.   During his tenure, Mr. Hanna partnered with DOJ’s Antitrust Division to start the Procurement Collusion Strike Force in Los Angeles – focused on investigating antitrust crimes in public contracting, such as bid-rigging – created a Financial Crimes Task Force, and oversaw one of the largest Health Care Strike Force’s in the country.

Prior to becoming U.S. Attorney, Mr. Hanna was a litigation partner with Gibson Dunn for almost 20 years, focusing on white collar defense, regulatory enforcement, and commercial litigation.  Mr. Hanna has significant experience handling Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters, is one of the few attorneys to have litigated FCPA cases with both DOJ and the SEC, and has conducted sensitive cross-border internal investigations around the globe, including in Argentina, China, Colombia, UAE, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Malaysia, Russia, and Venezuela.

Early in his career, Mr. Hanna served as a federal prosecutor in Southern California for eight years.  Mr. Hanna was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles from 1990 to 1994, handling matters involving illegal export of high-technology computer equipment, money laundering, financial structuring, narcotics, and other violent and economic crimes.  From 1995 to 1998, Mr. Hanna was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California in San Diego, where he served as Deputy Chief of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and handled cases involving transnational narcotics trafficking organizations, criminal tax and money laundering violations, and international chemical diversion.  As an Assistant United States Attorney, Mr. Hanna has represented the government in numerous federal court jury trials and has briefed and argued cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Hanna has significant first-chair jury trial experience and is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, the preeminent organization of trial lawyers in North America.  While in private practice, he regularly was recognized as one of the top white collar defense attorneys in California by Chambers USA Guide, listed in Best Lawyers in America®, recommended for class actions and white collar crime in Institutional Investor’s Benchmark Litigation Guide, and routinely named a Southern California “Super Lawyer” for white collar defense by Los Angeles magazine.

Mr. Hanna received his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 1987, where he served as Associate Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.  He earned his B.A. degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1984.