Lochlan F. Shelfer is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.  He practices in the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Betting and Gaming, Sports Law, and Litigation practice groups.

Mr. Shelfer represents clients in a wide range of high-stakes appellate and trial matters, including numerous Supreme Court cases.  Mr. Shelfer’s practice includes litigating cutting-edge separation-of-powers and other constitutional issues, representing clients in litigation against governmental agencies challenging governmental regulations, actions, and statutes, bringing actions against foreign sovereigns, litigating gambling and sports issues, and other complex litigation matters.  Mr. Shelfer has argued numerous cases before the federal courts of appeals, including before the en banc Fifth Circuit.  He has been named “One to Watch” by Best Lawyers in three separate practice areas: Appellate Practice, Entertainment and Sports Law, and Administrative and Regulatory Law.

Mr. Shelfer’s representations have included numerous high-profile victories, including:

• Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 140 S. Ct. 1601 (2020) – Persuaded the Supreme Court to reinstate $4.3 billion in retroactive punitive damages against the Republic of Sudan for its material support of terrorist activity.
• Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 136 S. Ct. 1310 (2016) – Successfully represented victims of state-sponsored terrorism who hold judgments against the government of Iran, ultimately defeating a separation-of-powers challenge to a federal statute before the Supreme Court and thereby enabling execution against nearly $2 billion in assets.
• Consumer Fin. Protection Bureau v. All Am. Check Cashing, Inc., 33 F.4th 218 (5th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (argued) – Secured vacatur of the district court’s decision, and persuaded five judges to pen a concurrence arguing that the CFPB’s funding scheme is unconstitutional.
• Brackeen v. Haaland, 994 F.3d 249 (5th Cir. 2021) (en banc) – Succeeded in persuading the en banc Fifth Circuit to strike down as unconstitutional key provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal statute that dictates a separate regime for state-court adoption proceedings involving “Indian children.”
• N.H. Lottery Comm’n v. Rosen, 986 F.3d 38 (1st Cir. 2021) – In a major victory for online gaming, the First Circuit rejected the United States’ interpretation of the Wire Act as applying broadly to non-sports gambling, and instead adopted Gibson Dunn’s position that the Act applies only to sports betting.
• Owens v. Republic of Sudan, 924 F.3d 1256 (D.C. Cir. 2019); 864 F.3d 751 (D.C. Cir. 2017) – Persuaded the D.C. Circuit to uphold nearly $6 billion in damages against Sudan for materially supporting al Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
• PHH Corp. v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 881 F.3d 75 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (en banc) – Prevailed in the first-ever appellate challenge to a CFPB enforcement proceeding, vacating the CFPB’s $109 million order on numerous grounds, including due process and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, and then persuading the en banc D.C. Circuit to reinstate those rulings.

Mr. Shelfer received his law degree from Yale Law School, where he served as an Articles Editor of the Yale Law Journal and was awarded the Judge William E. Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights for his work “How the Constitution Shall Not Be Construed,” BYU Law Review (2017), and the Joseph Parker Prize for best paper on legal history for his work “Special Juries in the Supreme Court,” Yale Law Journal (2013), which has been cited in numerous court opinions.

Prior to attending law school, Mr. Shelfer graduated summa cum laude from New York University with a B.A. in Classics and from Johns Hopkins University with a Ph.D. in Classics, specializing in the history of law.

From 2013–2014, Mr. Shelfer served as a law clerk to the Honorable Carlos T. Bea of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Shelfer is a member of the bars of Maryland and the District of Columbia.