Nick Murphy is of counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and a member of its White Collar Defense & Investigations and Litigation practice groups. He is a former federal prosecutor with significant first-chair trial experience and an extensive background in handling high-stakes criminal and civil matters across a broad range of practice areas.

From 2016 to 2022, Nick served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia’s Alexandria Division. There he investigated and prosecuted violent crime, including investigations of gangs involved in large-scale narcotics trafficking, firearms trafficking, and money laundering. Some of these investigations involved the use of wire-taps and translating, decoding and interpreting surreptitious communications related to trafficking. Nick also served as the Alexandria Division’s Project Safe Neighborhood coordinator, which is a federal program devoted to reducing violent crime. For his work with the United States Attorney’s Office, he received an FBI Service Award  in 2019.

Prior to joining the USAO, from 2009 to 2016, Nick served as an Honor’s Program Trial Attorney in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. He worked on criminal matters in the Criminal Section, focused on hate crimes and police misconduct, and worked on civil matters in the Educational Opportunities Section, focused on desegregation, Title IX equality, bullying and harassment, and the school to prison pipeline. Representative matters from his time at DOJ include the investigation of Dylann Roof for the murders of African-Americans at a church in Charleston, the investigation, prosecution, and conviction at trial of a sheriff’s deputy for the use of excessive force on a detainee, and the investigation and entry of a consent decree with City of Philadelphia Public Schools to resolve bullying of Asian-American students at a local high school. For his work with the Department of Justice, Nick received a Special Commendation from the Attorney General for Outstanding Service in 2011, and Attorney General Special Achievement Awards in 2010 and 2014.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Dartmouth College. He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he served as an editor on the Law Review. After law school, Nick clerked for the Honorable Petrese B. Tucker of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and New York, as well as before the United States District Courts for the Eastern District of New York and District of Columbia.