Tom Nolan is co-chair of Skadden’s West Coast Litigation practice. He is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading trial attorneys and has extensive trial experience representing corporations and individuals in both complex civil and criminal litigation in state and federal courts. Mr. Nolan is a former federal prosecutor and served as chief of fraud and special prosecutions in the Los Angeles United States Attorney’s Office. He has been a member of the defense bar since 1979.
Mr. Nolan’s extensive trial experience includes complex civil litigation matters. Mr. Nolan has represented clients, both plaintiffs and defendants, in matters involving antitrust and intellectual property issues, as well as in class action lawsuits and litigation involving a wide variety of contract disputes, unfair business practices and consumer fraud. He also has advised clients in matters involving the subprime mortgage industry. Over the years, he has obtained jury verdicts of more than one billion dollars for his clients as well as defeating claims exceeding two billion dollars asserted against his corporate clients.
Mr. Nolan also has represented corporations and individual clients, including directors and officers, in criminal and SEC enforcement matters and in internal investigations involving FCPA allegations, securities fraud, money laundering, RICO, health care fraud and insider trading violations.
Mr. Nolan also has supervised international investigations tracing millions of dollars through sophisticated offshore entities established to launder proceeds of fraudulent activity. In furtherance of these investigations, Mr. Nolan has initiated and supervised litigation in the Cayman Islands, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Mr. Nolan is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers (admission limited to 500 trial attorneys in the United States). Mr. Nolan has served as a lawyer representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. He is consistently recognized as a “leading lawyer” in antitrust, general commercial litigation and as a top-tier national trial attorney by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business and has been named “Litigator of the Week” by The AmLaw Litigation Daily for his trial success in limiting damages awarded in the “Barbie v. Bratz” doll-war case. The Best Lawyers in America also selected him for inclusion in its 2010 edition. Mr. Nolan’s litigation work was profiled in The American Lawyer in an article that named Skadden as a finalist for “Litigation Department of the Year.” In addition, Mr. Nolan has been profiled as one of the “Top 100” most influential lawyers in California in each of the past seven years and one of the “Top 30 Securities Litigators” in California by the Daily Journal.
