After nearly three years as general counsel for the National Security Agency, Rajesh “Raj” De is returning to Mayer Brown to lead the firm’s global privacy and security practice.
De, who first made partner at Mayer Brown in October 2007, left the firm two years later to join the U.S. Department of Justice, where he rose to the No. 2 role in the regulator’s Office of Legal Policy. In 2010, the Obama administration shuffled De over to the White House, where he spent the next two years as staff secretary and deputy assistant before becoming the NSA’s in-house legal chief in May 2012. He became embroiled in a burgeoning government surveillance debate stemming from a series of explosive leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
