Bio

Steve Brody is an accomplished trial lawyer who works to advance clients’ business priorities through industry-shaping victories in high-profile litigation while simultaneously protecting clients’ financial and reputational interests with sophisticated media strategies, government and investor relations, and overall crisis management. Steve is Co-Chair of the firm's nationally-recognized Product Liability and Mass Torts Practice, and also works frequently with attorneys in the firm’s Consumer Class Actions, White Collar Defense and Corporate Investigations, and Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Groups. He is the founder and Co-Chair of the firm’s Attorney General Investigations and Litigation Practice. Steve has defended mass torts, class actions and state attorney general cases involving pharmaceutical and medical device promotion and labeling, consumer fraud, false claims, state Medicaid reimbursement, health insurance plan benefits, and preferred provider agreements, among other issues. As a trial lawyer, he led two of the highest profile US civil trials in the last two decades, State of Oklahoma v. Johnson & Johnson and United States v. Philip Morris. At the federal appellate level, he has recently handled appeals in the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and DC Circuits, and at the state level in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. Before joining O’Melveny, Steve was the Acting Director of the Tobacco Litigation Team at the US Department of Justice. In that role, and in his prior role as the team’s Deputy Director, Steve led a team of 35 Justice Department lawyers through four years of discovery on three continents and a nine-month civil RICO trial against major cigarette manufacturers in one of the largest civil cases ever brought by the federal government. During the course of the litigation, Steve not only led the government’s prosecution, but also represented the interests of almost 20 executive branch agencies. The case resulted in a 1,653-page opinion from the district court awarding judgment for the United States against all defendants. The judgment was upheld on appeal. Steve’s work on the tobacco case has been described in several journal articles and books, including Harvard medical historian Allan Brandt’s “The Cigarette Century” (Basic Books 2007) and “Bad Acts: The Racketeering Case Against the Tobacco Industry” (American Public Health Assn. 2012). Steve is a member of the faculty for the National Trial Advocacy College at the University of Virginia School of Law, one of the nation’s premier trial advocacy programs for practicing lawyers. He is also a frequent speaker on state Attorney General investigations and litigation and product liability issues. Steve serves on the Board of Trustees of the Legal Aid Society of Washington, DC, and previously served on the Board of Directors for the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.