James Melendres focuses his practice on cybersecurity incident preparation and emergency response, related regulatory compliance and civil litigation as well as white collar criminal defense and government investigations. Drawing on his extensive experience as a former federal prosecutor, James focuses his private practice on representing companies in high stakes civil litigation and advising clients on crisis and risk management.
Prior to joining Snell & Wilmer, James served in the leadership offices at the Department of Justice as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General where he oversaw legal and policy issues regarding sensitive cyber matters. He also led some of the Justice Department's most high-profile and complex matters, including the prosecution of former Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus for mishandling classified information and making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In his cybersecurity practice, James leverages his substantial prosecutorial background and experience with data security and cybercrime matters to help clients across a spectrum of industries manage cybersecurity risks and respond to cyber-attacks. His experience positions him well to protect companies both before and after a data breach, including conducting pre-breach security and privacy assessments, leading tabletop exercises and breach simulations, coordinating crisis management and incident response, advising on breach notification, and defending companies in breach-related litigation and regulatory proceedings. He has unique experience for advising companies about post-attack regulatory enforcement actions and private litigation. Additionally, James’s experience makes him very valuable to companies responding to government demands for information about their customers and subscribers pursuant to a variety of electronic surveillance statutes, and gives him a wealth of knowledge for advising emerging virtual currency companies regarding anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and other regulatory compliance obligations.
During his tenure at the Department of Justice, James advised the Assistant Attorney General on legal and policy issues involving cyber matters, including sophisticated network intrusions, corporate breaches, digital espionage, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against critical infrastructure, cyber extortion, and ransomware threats. Additionally, he served as the Justice Department's representative to the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF), a multi-agency fusion center that serves as the national focal point for integrating and sharing information related to all domestic cyber threat investigations. James also led multiple large-scale cyber investigations involving the distribution of sophisticated malware and the subsequent exfiltration of proprietary business information from corporate victims.
