Noteworthy
Director, Constitutional Policing and Policy Bureau, Los Angeles Police Department (2026);
Partner, ArentFox Schiff LLP (formerly Arent Fox LLP), White Collar and Investigations
Practice Group (2010–2025); Partner, Howrey LLP, Global Litigation Practice Group
(2005–2010); Chief Deputy City Attorney, City of Los Angeles (2001–2005); Senior United
States Attorney (1999–2001); Initial Chief of Prosecutions and Legal Coordinator, International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, The Hague (1994–1998); Founder, national
collegiate internship program for the Yugoslav Tribunal; Consultant, International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (1995–1998); United States Attorney, Central District of California
(1992–1994); Chief Assistant United States Attorney, Central District of California
(1990–1992); Chief, Major Frauds Section, United States Attorney’s Office, Central District of
California (1986–1990); Founder and Chair, Interagency Telemarketing Task Force, Central
District of California (late 1980s), the first in the nation; Founder and Chair, Interagency
Financial Institutions Fraud Task Force, Central District of California (late 1980s); Assistant
United States Attorney, Central District of California (1982–1992); Associate, Adams, Duque &
Hazeltine (1979–1982); Adjunct Professor, International Criminal Law, UCLA School of Law
(2000–2002).
Education and Honors
University of Texas School of Law (J.D., 1979); Vice President, Student Bar Association;
Consul Award; Edward Guleke Scholarship Award, Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year;
Honors grades in all trial-related courses; Legal Assistant, Texas Senate State Affairs
Committee; Intern, United States Department of Justice, Western District of Texas; University of
Texas at Austin (B.A., Plan II Honors Program, 1976, High Honors); Phi Beta Kappa; Omicron
Delta Kappa; Friar Society, Scrivener (the University of Texas’s oldest honor society); Alpha Phi
Omega, Vice President (twice); National Distinguished Service Key; Cactus Goodfellow; Cactus
Outstanding Student; Dad’s Association Outstanding Student Award (1975); University of Texas
Wrestling and Lacrosse Teams; Keeton Fellow and Member, Townes Hall Twenty of Southern
California, University of Texas School of Law.
Government Service Awards and Professional Recognition
Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service (1992), presented by Attorney General
William P. Barr for national leadership in combating financial institution fraud; Cross-Agency
Award, United States Department of the Treasury; commendations from three United States
Attorneys General and one Canadian Attorney General; commendations from Los Angeles City
Council President John Ferraro, Mayor Tom Bradley, and District Attorney Gil Garcetti for his
leadership of Community Projects for Restoration; Albert E. Arent Pro Bono Award (twice);
Chambers USA, Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations (California); The
Best Lawyers in America, Criminal Defense: White-Collar; Legal 500; Super Lawyers; Top
Attorneys in Southern California; America’s Most Honored Professionals; Who’s Who in
America; AVVO Top Rated Lawyer; Top Rated Lawyers in Commercial Litigation.
Professional Associations
Chancery Club of Los Angeles, President (2023–2024); American Bar Association; American
Bar Foundation, Fellow; Litigation Counsel of America, Senior Fellow; Trial Law Institute;
Diversity Law Institute; Inner City Law Center, Board of Directors (2005–present); Institute for
Corporate Counsel; Human Rights Watch Los Angeles Executive Committee (former);
American Bar Association International Law Committee (Los Angeles), Human Rights
Subcommittee, Co-Chair (former); Association of Business Trial Lawyers (former); Standing
Committee on Discipline, United States District Court, Central District of California (former);
Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, Representative (former); Attorney General Janet Reno’s
Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys (former); Department of Justice Economic
Crime Council (former); Los Angeles Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee
(former); Los Angeles County Bar Association, Legislative Affairs Committee, Secretary
(former).
Bar Admissions
California (1979).
A representative sampling of Mr. Bower’s experience is as follows:
Government Enforcement and White Collar Defense
- Convinced the Securities and Exchange Commission to drop fraud allegations against a
local city and its airport authority. - Secured the dismissal of all charges against a former regional vice president of a publicly
traded medical information technology company after the Department of Justice’s
Corporate Fraud Task Force had indicted him. - Secured a non-prosecution agreement from the United States Attorney’s Office in
Brooklyn in a securities fraud investigation involving the third largest retail jewelry chain
in the country. - Convinced the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles not to indict a “target” in a
major labor relations fraud case. - Convinced the United States Attorney’s Office in San Diego to drop insurance fraud
charges against a former NFL player. - Ended an investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles into a San
Pedro fish company. - Represented a key witness in the federal investigation of Lance Armstrong.
- Helped defend a government fraud case in the Western District of Texas that resulted in
probation.
Public Corruption and Municipal Matters
- Convinced the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office to drop a public corruption
investigation of a high-profile City official. - Convinced the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission to close an investigation of six Los
Angeles World Airports officials. - Represented two whistleblowers who broke open a bribery case in the Oregon prison
system. - Served as lead attorney for the City of Los Angeles in an unfair business practice case
against an international public relations firm and obtained a multimillion-dollar
settlement for the City.
Health Care
- Represented a prominent hospital in a patient dumping investigation that drew wide
media coverage. He quietly resolved the case, helped the hospital develop new
guidelines, and arranged for no further press coverage of his client, even as the media
named every other hospital in the months-long investigation. - Represented the Board of Directors of a nursing school under investigation by the FBI
and the DOE for fraud in grading and graduations. He negotiated directly with the Chief
of the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney’s Office, which dismissed the
entire investigation and returned all seized funds in time for the school to survive. - Negotiated with the United States Department of Justice a resolution of alleged Stark law
violations by six urologists in Monterey County, avoiding any criminal charges. - Broke a stalemate in a Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office prosecution of a physician,
resolved the case, and saved the physician’s career. - Settled civil claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act
against two major groups of insurance
Unfair Competition, Environmental, and Regulatory Matters
- Convinced the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office to close an unfair competition
investigation of a large national bank and negotiated the bank’s exposure in two
additional unfair competition cases. - Negotiated a successful resolution with the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office
of alleged environmental violations in a historic area of Salinas. - Negotiated favorable resolutions with the California Air Resources Board for two
separate international corporations.
Civil Litigation
- Obtained the dismissal of a private investigator from a private civil rights action.
- Served as lead attorney and crafted a settlement that benefited both sides in a dispute
between a disabled jockey and the Jockeys’ Guild.
United States Attorney and Federal Prosecutor
- Served as the court-appointed United States Attorney for the Central District of
California from August 1992 through January 1994, under both the Bush and Clinton
administrations. He supervised the Criminal, Civil, Tax, and Asset Forfeiture Sections,
served as the final authority on civil settlements and tax litigation, and led an office with
a large inventory of qui tam cases that ranked as a national leader in asset forfeitures. - Led the office during numerous high-profile matters, including the federal Rodney King
civil rights trial; the Charles Keating financial institution fraud prosecution, in which he
served as one of the original prosecutors and obtained 11 guilty pleas; the Smushkevich
medical billing fraud prosecution; the tax prosecution of Marvin Mitchelson; the
undercover investigation and prosecution of a neo-Nazi group; several major
prosecutions of local defense contractors; and several public corruption cases, including
the case against Arizona Governor Fife Symington. - Headed, at the request of the Department of Justice, the $23 million Community Projects
for Restoration in Los Angeles under President George H.W. Bush’s “Weed and Seed”
program following the 1992 civil unrest. He coordinated assistance from numerous
federal agencies and worked with city and county officials, community leaders, law
enforcement, and residents to bring social services and law enforcement initiatives to
high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. - Served on Attorney General Janet Reno’s Advisory Committee of United States
Attorneys during the transition between administrations, and helped the Los Angeles
office play a major role in developing new Department of Justice policies and strategies. - Served as Chief of the Major Fraud Section, which handled securities fraud, insider
trading, financial institution fraud, investment and telemarketing fraud, bankruptcy fraud,
real estate fraud, and medical and insurance fraud. He formed and chaired the country’s
first telemarketing fraud task force. - Founded and chaired the Interagency Financial Institutions Fraud Task Force during the
savings and loan crisis, which coordinated the work of regulatory, administrative, and
investigative agencies throughout the Central District, and fully integrated the district’s
financial institution fraud prosecutions into the Los Angeles office. - Handled litigation under the Classified Information Procedures Act and the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, served as the West Coast representative for the Department
of Justice’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, and helped secure the landmark
decision in In re Kevork, 634 F. Supp. 1002 (C.D. Cal. 1985), aff’d, 788 F.2d 566 (9th
Cir. 1986), which held for the first time that the United States could share foreign
intelligence information with another country for use in a domestic criminal prosecution. - Served on the 1984 Summer Olympics Task Force by appointment of United States
Attorney Robert Bonner, monitoring potential federal crimes during the Los Angeles
Olympic Games. - Taught at the United States Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute and lectured
nationally on topics ranging from the federal sentencing guidelines to genocide
prosecutions.
International Criminal Law
- Served from June 1994 through December 1998 as a United States representative to the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, one of three Assistant United
States Attorneys selected from more than 300 applicants.
• Participated in April 1994, while the Bosnian war continued, in a multi-agency
investigative mission to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina that developed evidence ofatrocities in the municipality of Brčko and laid the foundation for one of the tribunal’s
first genocide cases.
• Served as lead prosecutor in the genocide case against Goran Jelisić, a commander at the
Luka detention camp, one of the first genocide cases at the tribunal to go to trial. He
delivered the opening statement during his final week at The Hague.
• Served as one of three prosecutors who presented the case against Radovan Karadžić and
Ratko Mladić to obtain international arrest warrants. His witnesses included the Mayor
of Sarajevo and a Dutch soldier who had witnessed executions in the Srebrenica region.
A British playwright later dramatized the hearing, and Mr. Bowers appears as a character
in the play.
• Became the first Legal Coordinator for the Investigations Section and supervised legal
advisors from a dozen countries. Developed the tribunal’s first charging and indictment
guidelines and chaired its weekly legal meetings and internal indictment reviews.
• Established, with University of Texas law professor Steven Ratner, a competitive
summer internship that had placed numerous University of Texas as well as other law
students at the tribunal.
• Advised the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Kigali on managing its
caseload.
• Trained attorneys abroad through an ABA program for Sudanese attorneys addressing the
Darfur situation; an American Bar Association program for Haitian attorneys in Port-au-
Prince; and the Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan.
Chief Deputy City Attorney, City of Los Angeles
- Supervised more than 525 attorneys, including the office’s advisory work for elected
officials, commissions, and other City entities, and its preparation of legal opinions and
ordinances. During his tenure, the office twice argued and prevailed before the Supreme
Court of the United States.
Teaching, Publications, and Media
- Taught seminars on international criminal law as an adjunct professor at UCLA School of
Law, judged the Jessup International Moot Court Regional Finals, and moderated a
debate between the British barristers involved in the Pinochet extradition. - Appeared as an expert on criminal and international criminal law on “60 Minutes,” ABC
News, “Lehr Report,” National Public Radio’s Weekend America, and other television
and radio programs. - Authored articles including “Opinion: It’s Time to Bring Khashoggi’s Killers Under
Magnitsky Sanctions,” The Daily Caller (Oct. 23, 2018); “Clients With International
Interests May Need to Register Under FARA,” Daily Journal (Oct. 22, 2018); “America
Should Support the Efforts of the ICC,” Daily Journal (Sept. 21, 2018); “Ending Interpol
Abuse: How a Key Tool in Global Law Enforcement Is Being Hijacked by Rogue
Regimes,” Huffington Post (Mar. 16, 2017); “Partners in Justice for Darfur,” California
Lawyer (Jan. 2008); “Justice Sought for Darfur War Crimes,” Los Angeles Times (June 12, 2007); and “Switching Sides: Prosecutors Move to Defense,” Los Angeles Daily
Journal (Jan. 12, 2006).