Overview
Jesse Smallwood’s practice focuses on complex civil litigation. Jesse has experience in a range of substantive areas, including commercial disputes, class actions, consumer protection claims, antitrust law, securities law, and bankruptcy law, and he has handled cases in federal and state courts and in arbitration proceedings across the United States. He has also represented clients in criminal and regulatory investigations before the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA, and state attorneys general, among others.
In recent years, Jesse’s practice has focused primarily on civil litigation involving the financial services industry, including: defending financial institutions against putative class-action lawsuits; defending financial institutions and mortgage originators in high-stakes litigation relating to the sale and servicing of residential mortgage loans and the issuance of mortgage-backed securities; defending financial institutions in putative class-action antitrust lawsuits involving alleged anticompetitive conduct with respect to certain financial markets and products; and bankruptcy-related litigation, including defending clients in adversary proceedings and against claims brought by liquidating trusts.
Jesse was born and raised in the Washington, D.C. area and graduated from Davidson College, cum laude, in 2000. He received his J.D., summa cum laude, from Duke University, where he served as Executive Editor of the Duke Law Journal and was a member of the Order of the Coif. Jesse served as a law clerk to Judge David Levi, Chief U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of California. Jesse joined Williams & Connolly in 2006. Jesse is currently a member of the Bankruptcy Practice Group.