Neal Katyal

Lawyer, professor, former acting Solicitor General, and author

Neal Katyal is the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University and a partner at Hogan Lovells. He is a Charles F. Kettering Foundation senior fellow and previously served as acting solicitor general of the United States. Katyal has argued 50 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. In the most recent 2022-23 term, he argued five separate cases (nearly 10 percent of the entire docket), including winning the landmark voting case Moore v. Harper. His cases include successfully striking down the Guantánamo military tribunals, successfully defending the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, successfully defending the Peace Cross in Maryland, and a landmark personal jurisdiction win for Bristol Myers Squibb. At the age of 53, he has already argued more Supreme Court cases in US history than any other minority attorney, recently breaking the record held by Thurgood Marshall. Katyal has received many distinctions, including the highest civilian award given by the US Department of Justice, the Edmund J. Randolph Award. He was also named The American Lawyer’s Grand Prize Winner of the Litigator of the Year award in 2017 and was named a Litigator of the Year again in 2023. He was named one of the 500 Leading Lawyers by LawDragon Magazine, one of four lawyers so named for every single year from 2005 to 2023. He has performed on Netflix’s House of Cards and Showtime’s Billions, where he played himself in both series. He is a trustee of both Dartmouth College and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

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The Charles F. Kettering Foundation has established an elite group of senior fellows to work with the foundation to advance our pro-inclusive democracy mission. Learn more about all of our Kettering fellows.