Hogan & Hartson will add Christopher Wolf as a partner in its Washington office Wednesday in its privacy and antitrust, competition, and consumer protection practices. Wolf joins Hogan from Proskauer Rose where he worked as a litigation partner in the firm's D.C. office since 1989.
With Hogan, Wolf, along with Hogan partners Lynda Marshall and Marcy Wilder, will co-chair the firm's 45-lawyer privacy group -- significantly more than the 12-lawyer privacy group he chaired at Proskauer. His move to Hogan comes about four months after he founded the Future of Privacy Forum -- a non-profit think tank that focuses on new privacy and data security issues. According to Wolf in a November interview with The Am Law Daily, Proskauer supported Wolf, but AT&T Corp., a Proskauer client, provided Wolf with the "seed" money to start the group. Wolf says he has since secured other corporate sponsors, but declined to name them. At Hogan, he will continue working with the forum daily.
Wolf has been involved in several high-profile privacy cases, including his representation of CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson in a civil suit after her status with the CIA was disclosed to journalists. Plame and Wilson are no longer clients of Wolf's, and he declined to say whether any current clients would follow him to Hogan.
The addition of Wolf comes just after Hogan recently lost two high-profile lawyers to the Obama administration. In January, Obama nominated former partner Christine Varney to serve as assistant attorney general for the antitrust division in the Department of Justice. More recently, in February, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano appointed former partner Mary Ellen Callahan to serve as the chief privacy officer of Homeland Security.
"It was a difficult decision leaving Proskauer and I have the highest regard for that firm." says Wolf, who was approached by Hogan to join the firm. "Hogan offered a stronger platform for my practice and given the recent departures, there was a need for additional leadership."
Wolf's ties to Hogan began more than 100 years ago. Before Wolf joined the private sector in 1982 with Arnold & Porter, Wolf was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Aubrey Robinson. On his last day, Judge Robinson gave Wolf a photo of the D.C. bench and bar from 1907. More recently, upon closer examination while packing his things at Proskauer, two men in the photo jumped out at Wolf -- his grandfather Alexander Wolf and Hogan & Hartson founder Frank Hogan.
Christopher Wolf says: "I guess Wolf and Hogan are back together again."
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