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Matthew D. McGill is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He practices in the firm’s Litigation Department and its Appellate and Constitutional Law, Intellectual Property, Sports Law, and Betting and Gaming practice groups.
Mr. McGill is a Chambers-ranked appellate litigator. In 2019, he was recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a “Future Litigation Star” in Washington, D.C. Law360 recently named him a Sports Law “MVP” for his work to legalize sports wagering in New Jersey, and previously had named him a national “Rising Star,” identifying him as one of ten appellate lawyers under 40 to watch. The National Law Journal named Mr. McGill among its “2020 Sports & Entertainment Trailblazers” for his work before the Supreme Court regarding legal sports betting. In 2016, the National Law Journal named him as a “Litigation Trailblazer” for his pioneering work against foreign sovereigns. The American Lawyer has named him litigator of the week three times. He has participated in 21 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, prevailing in 16. Spanning a wide range of substantive areas, those representations have included several high-profile triumphs over foreign and domestic sovereigns:
Outside the Supreme Court, Mr. McGill’s practice focuses on cases involving novel and complex questions of federal law, often in high-profile litigation against governmental entities. For example, he currently represents a creditor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico that is challenging Puerto Rico’s federally-appointed Oversight Board under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. He also represents victims of the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings in appeals brought by the government of Sudan raising questions under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
In the intellectual property area, Mr. McGill regularly participates in significant copyright and patent cases before the Supreme Court and the courts of appeals. In the Supreme Court, he represented Nautilus in Nautilus v. Biosig, Microsoft in Microsoft v. AT&T and Microsoft v. i4i, and publisher John Wiley & Sons in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons.
Mr. McGill also maintains an active pro bono practice. He currently represents three adoptive couples in a constitutional challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act, and he represents persons born in American Samoa in their constitutional challenge to a federal statute that designates them “non-citizen nationals.” In 2008, he successfully defended Senator John McCain in cases contending that Senator McCain was not a “natural-born citizen” and therefore was ineligible to be President.
Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, Mr. McGill served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He clerked for the Hon. Joseph M. McLaughlin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Hon. John G. Roberts, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Mr. McGill earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1996. In 2000, he graduated from Stanford Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif.
Mr. McGill is licensed to practice in New York and the District of Columbia and he has been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, District of Columbia, and Federal Circuits, and the United States District Courts for the District of Columbia and the Southern District of New York.
Stanford University - 2000 Juris Doctor
Dartmouth College - 1996 Bachelor of Arts
District of Columbia Bar
New York Bar