This website uses cookies. By using this website, you agree to our Cookie Policy.
J.B. Howard is a Counsel in the Global Litigation group. J.B. has broad and deep experience in complex litigation, having spent about half his career in private practice with national and international law firms and half in public service.
During his over 15 years with the Office of the Attorney General of Maryland, including eight as the Deputy Attorney General, J.B. developed an expertise in state enforcement and administrative proceedings, and as well as in high-stakes civil litigation involving, among other subject matter areas, public/private partnerships, federal consent decrees, state-federal funding and regulatory issues, state budgetary issues, procurement, Section 1983 civil rights actions, constitutional law, sovereign immunity, and numerous areas of public law.
As Deputy Attorney General, J.B. co-led an office of 450 attorneys representing 54 units of State government. He routinely provided advice and counsel to the Governor, as well as to the Treasurer, Comptroller, and cabinet Secretaries. He also personally handled various cases and projects, including:
- successfully arguing Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Maryland in the United States Supreme Court (Eleventh Amendment immunity from damages claims under the Family and Medical Leave Act);
- co-drafting and coordinating Maryland’s lead multistate amicus brief in the Supreme Court case upholding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate;
- drafting an amicus brief joined by 33 States in Exxon v. Baker, arguing in support of punitive damages for the Exxon Valdez spill under admiralty law;
- acting as lead advisor to the Governor in one of the largest ever mergers of a merchant energy company with a local utility;
- serving as deputy to former Maryland Attorney General Steve Sachs in an investigation commissioned by the Governor into State Police surveillance of anti-war and anti-death-penalty groups; and
- arguing several precedent-setting cases in the federal appellate courts and the Supreme Court of Maryland.
J.B.’s experience in private practice, most recently as partner at a large national firm, has included representing clients in corporate governance, securities, white-collar, antitrust, and administrative litigation, and in internal investigations. A sampling of these matters include:
- representing a special committee of the board of directors of the then-largest real estate investment trust in the country in an investigation responding to a shareholder demand for derivative litigation;
- representing the audit committee of the board of directors of a cutting-edge, publicly traded biotech company in the investigation of a years-long pattern of improper revenue recognition;
- representing outside directors in a breach of fiduciary case arising from the largest failure of a state-chartered depository institution in Maryland’s history;
- conducting on behalf of a national law firm two sensitive internal investigations of misconduct by firm partners;
- representing a defense company in one of the first private civil RICO forfeiture cases in history;
- representing a large gaming company in a dispute before Maryland’s Board of Contract Appeals;
- serving, at the request of the Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland, as counsel in the confidential investigation of a statewide public official; and
- representing partners in an oil and gas development company in a partnership dispute; and
- representing real estate developers in land use and regulatory litigation.
Earlier in his career in private practice, J.B. was selected by his firm for assignment to the House Judiciary Committee in its investigation of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) scandal and led the drafting of the ensuing report.
J.B. is highly regarded for his talents as a legal writer. He won the National Association of Attorneys General’s award for the Best Supreme Court of the United States Brief filed on behalf of a state. In addition, he has been invited by the Maryland Judiciary to be a legal writing instructor for newly appointed judges during their judicial training. For a number of years, he taught legal writing at the University of Baltimore. He has received the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award for excellence in appellate practice and for leading Maryland’s role in the small group of pioneering states that commenced the tobacco litigation. He later won the Attorney General’s Exceptional Career Service Award.
J.B. received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was the Executive Editor of the Virginia Law Review. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable James Dickson Phillips, Jr., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He attended the University of North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar and received his B.A. in English and Classics, receiving the University Latin prize, playing on the NCAA Division I Champion lacrosse team, and winning the ACC Scholar Award for the highest GPA among the conference’s student-athletes.
