Stevan E. Bunnell was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in October 2013. As General Counsel, Steve is the chief legal officer for the Department, is responsible for advising the Secretary and the Department’s senior leadership on all significant legal, policy, and operational issues, and leads over 1,800 lawyers in the Department’s headquarters and operating components.
Prior to joining the Department, Steve was the Managing Partner of the Washington, DC office of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, an international law firm with over 800 lawyers. Steve’s legal practice at O’Melveny focused on government enforcement matters, corporate internal investigations, and complex litigation. Steve previously served for 17 years as a career federal prosecutor in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. He was the Chief of the Criminal Division in the DC U.S. Attorneys’ Office for three years, and before that served as Chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Fraud and Public Corruption Section. He also served as a Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department Justice, and before that as a Trial Attorney in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the DC U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Steve has also been an associate with the law firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larocca & Lewin, in Washington, DC, an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and the George Washington University Law School, and a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Steve’s service with professional and non-profit organizations includes being a member of the Board of Visitors of Stanford Law School, the Executive Committee of the Assistant United States Attorney Association, and the Board of Directors of the Justice Department’s Just-Us-Kids Childcare Center. He also has been the Treasurer of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, and the Vice Chair of the Criminal Law and Individual Rights Section of the D.C. Bar.
Steve received his J.D. (with distinction) in 1986 from Stanford Law School, where he was the Senior Articles Editor of the Stanford Law Review, and a B.A. in history in 1982 from Yale University, where he graduated magna cum laude.