A definite highlight of the 2025 NAFUSA conference was the hour spent listening to four-time Emmy nominee Jay Bilas, an ESPN college basketball analyst who has repeatedly been named the BEST analyst in college basketball by Sports Illustrated and other sports media. The feedback from many conference attendees was that Bilas more than deserves that accolade, and more than one attendee claimed to have come to D.C. just to hear his presentation.
In a question/answer session with NAFUSA president-elect Tim Purdon, Bilas – a former Duke basketball star and a lawyer – shared his perspective on the changing face of college athletics. The conversation was fast-paced and touched on many of the controversial issues facing college athletes, university sports programs and sports fans. He discussed the impact of NIL (name, imaging and likeness) and the ability of college athletes to change schools through a “portal.” He talked about how the money is divided between the universities themselves, the coaches and athletes, and the impact sports media such as ESPN has on the game, from the perspective of a lawyer and former college athlete. His insightful comments about the impact on, and benefit to, college athletes themselves was perhaps the most thought-provoking part of his presentation, especially when considering the staggering amounts of money paid to many coaches and sports programs based on the performance of these college students. His strong background as a college athlete, sports analyst and lawyer was clear in his ability to give real examples of how the changes in collegiate sports could benefit college athletes as well as create challenges.
Many thanks to Jay Bilas for sharing his time and expertise with NAFUSA members and for his candid and thoughtful responses to Tim’s (and the audience’s) questions. He deserves an Emmy.
NAFUSA members attending the 2025 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. elected a
slate of new officers and directors on Friday, October 10 in the general meeting at the
conclusion of conference programming. Former President Elect Catherine Hanaway (ED Missouri) was elected President for 2025-2026 replacing outgoing President Donna Bucella. Tim Purdon (North Dakota) became President Elect; Don Washington (WD Louisiana) became Vice President; and Rick Hartunian (ND New York) became Secretary. Members elected Jeff Taylor (District of Columbia) to the position of Treasurer. Jeff had been serving a term as a Board Member in the class of 2026.
Members also elected six new members to the Board of Directors, including Erin Nealy
Cox (ND Texas), a current member of the outgoing class of 2025 who was elected to serve an additional year on the Board filling Jeff Taylor’s vacated position. In addition to Erin, the newly elected directors are Rich Roper, Nick Trutanich, Ken Wainstein, Steve Dettelbach, Josh Levy and Jill Steinberg. The newly elected directors will serve a term of three years. In accordance with NAFUSA policy, three of the new board members previously served in a Democratic administration and three in a Republican administration.
Rich Roper served as U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Texas from 2004-2008 before leaving to join Holland and Knight where he practiced for 17 years. He is currently a partner in Dallas/Ft. Worth based Vartabedian Hester & Haynes LLP, leading the firm’s White Collar and Investigations practice.
Nick Trutanich served as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada from 2019 – 2021.
After graduating from Georgetown University Law Center in 2005, he worked in private
practice and as law clerk to U.S. District Judge Manuel Real. After serving as an AUSA in the Central District of California for 6 years, Nick joined the Nevada Attorney General’s Office in 2014 until being sworn in as U.S. Attorney in January 2019. In March 2021 he joined the Fox Corporation as its Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer.
Ken Wainstein served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 2004 until 2006,
when he was confirmed as the DOJ’s first Assistant Attorney General for National Security.
In March 2008, he was appointed Homeland Security Advisor by President Bush and later
was named Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland
Security. In April 2025 he became a partner in the firm Mayer Brown as leader of its Global
Investigation & White-Collar Defense practice and member of its National Security and
Congressional Investigations practice.
Steve Dettelbach served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio (NDOH).
After graduating from Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal judge before joining the
DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in 1992. He served as an AUSA in the Maryland and NDOH
offices between 1997 and 2006, during which time he was detailed for two years to
Chairman Patrick Leahy of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He was sworn in as U.S.
Attorney in 2009 and served until 2016 when he rejoined the firm BakerHostetler. In July
2022 he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as ATF Director, the first confirmed director
since the departure of NAFUSA member Todd Jones in 2015. In April 2025 he rejoined
BakerHostetler as a partner on the White Collar, Investigations and Securities Enforcement
and Litigation Team.
Josh Levy served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from May 2023 to
January 2025. He previously served as First Assistant AUSA in that office. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he was as associate and later a partner in the law firm Ropes and Gray. After leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office he rejoined the firm in its litigation and
enforcement practice.
Jill Steinberg served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia from February
2023 until January 2025. After graduating from Duke University Law School in 1998, she
became an Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia. In 2001 she joined Rogers & Hardin
LLP as an associate before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of
Georgia in 2008. She served in several positions in the DOJ, including the Office of the
Deputy Attorney General and the National Security Division until leaving in 2021 to join
Ballard Spahr as partner. She rejoined the firm in 2025 after her resignation as U.S.
Attorney.
Trini Ross, former U.S. Attorney (USA) for the Western District of New York (WDNY), is a new
NAFUSA member. She began her legal career as an appellate attorney for the New York
Supreme Court and later served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in the WDNY from
1995 to 2018. Trini was sworn into office as USA in October 2021 and served until 2025, the
first African American woman to lead that office. She joined the firm Harter Secrest &
Emery LLP as partner in its Buffalo office on October 6, 2025, and leads the firm’s Government and Internal Investigations team.
NAFUSA also welcomes new member Ryan Buchanan, former USA for the Northern District
of Georgia (NDGA) 2022-2025. During his tenure as USA, Ryan served on the AGAC and was co-chair of its Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee and led the Foreign Influence and Nation-State Threats Working Group. Ryan began his legal career as clerk for U.S. District Judge Inge Prytz Johnson in Alabama. He joined McGuire Woods in Atlanta as an associate before becoming an AUSA in NDGA in 2010 and rejoined the firm as a partner in 2025 after leaving office.
Finally, NAFUSA welcomed new member Mac Schneider in October. Mac served as U.S.
Attorney for the District of North Dakota from 2022 to 2025. He graduated from the
University of North Dakota – where he was a starting center on UND’s 2001 national
championship football team – and received his J.D. from Georgetown University. Mac
served two terms in the North Dakota Senate, where he was elected Assistant Minority
Leader and later Minority Leader. He joined Fredrikson & Byron as an officer in its Litigation
Group in May 2025.
Patrick “Pat” Ryan, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma during the
Clinton Administration and former NAFUSA member, passed away unexpectedly on
September 18, 2025, while vacationing with family and friends in Aruba. He was 79.
Pat is remembered as the U.S. Attorney during the Oklahoma City bombing prosecutions
and for his work with both the prosecutors in those cases and with the survivors and
families of the victims of that deadly bombing. He was also well known for wearing his
signature cowboy hat during the months he spent in Denver attending the trials of Timothy
McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols, who were convicted for their roles in the
bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19,1995. Pat, who was
sworn in as U.S. Attorney in June 2025, shortly after the bombing, said he wore his white
cowboy hat to remind the people back home in Oklahoma that, “Ok, we’ve got a guy there
who’s from Oklahoma, who is one of us, who is fighting for us.” Pat served as U.S. Attorney
until October 1999.
Pat received his J.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1969 and then served four years in
the United States Air Force, including two years as the Chief Military Justice for Southeast
Asia from 1972 to 1974. At the time of his death, he was a Director of the law firm Ryan
Whaley Attorneys in Oklahoma City.
A flag is being flown over the Department of Justice in his honor. His cowboy hat is on
display at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.
NAFUSA welcomed four new members in September, all of whom served during the Biden
Administration, bringing the total number of NAFUSA members from that administration to
51. We look forward to welcoming them at NAFUSA’s 2025 Annual Conference in D.C. this
month.
Kenneth “Ken” Parker, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio (SDOH) from
2021 to 2025, joined NAFUSA in September. Ken served as a judicial law clerk for Federal
District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel for two years following graduation from the Indiana
University Maurer School of Law in 1997. From 1999 to 2021, he served as an Assistant
United States Attorney (AUSA) in the SDOH until nominated by President Biden in September 2021 to be the U.S. Attorney and subsequently Senate confirmed. Ken joined the Taft Law Firm as a partner in its Cincinnati office in September 2025.
Also joining in September was Nikolas “Kolo” Kerest, who served as the U.S. Attorney for
the District of Vermont from 2021 to January 2025. Following graduation from Cornell Law
School in 2000, Kolo clerked for Judge Fred Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit. He worked in private practice at Ropes & Gray in Boston for three years and
then at Pierce Atwood LLP in Portland, Maine before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office as an
AUSA in December 2021. After his resignation as U.S. Attorney in 2025, he joined the law firm Stris & Maher LLP as a partner.
We are also happy to welcome new lifetime member, Roger Handberg. Roger served as
U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida (MDFL) from December 2021 to February
2025, after having served as an AUSA in that district since 2002. Following graduation from
Harvard Law School in 1994, he worked as an associate at King & Spalding in Atlanta for
five years before leaving to join the Florida Attorney General’s Office in 1999. Roger is
currently a shareholder at Gray Robinson in Orlando, Florida.
Tessa Gorman, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington (WDWA), also
joined NAFUSA in September. Tessa began her career with the DOJ in the Honors Program
in 1998 after serving as law clerk to Federal District Judge Douglas Woodlock in
Massachusetts following graduation from law school at the University of California,
Berkeley. She became an AUSA for the WDWA in 2001 rising to the level of First Assistant
and served as “Acting” U.S. Attorney twice before being appointed U.S. Attorney by
Attorney General Garland and later by the district court judges in her district.
NAFUSA lifetime member Stephen J. “Steve” Cox assumed the duties of Attorney General for the State of Alaska on August 29, 2025, after being appointed by Governor Mike Dunleavy the previous day. Governor Dunleavy will forward Cox’s name to the Alaska Legislature for confirmation during the 2026 session.
Steve served in the first Trump Administration as Deputy Associate Attorney General and Chief of Staff within the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of the Associate Attorney General. In 2020, he was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr and later that year by the Court. He served in that position until January 20, 2025.
Earlier in his career, Steve served on the William H. Webster Commission on the FBI’s
counterterrorism and intelligence operations in the wake of the 2009 Fort Hood attacks,
and as a senior advisor to the Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
during the latter part of the Bush Administration. Prior to public service, He was a senior
associate attorney at a multinational law firm in Washington, D.C. Prior to appointment as Alaska’s Attorney General, he served as Senior Vice President, Chief Legal and Strategy Officer at Bristol Bay Industrial (BBI), an investment platform of Bristol Bay Native Corporation.
Steve thanked the Governor for the appointment, “I am honored that Governor Dunleavy has invited me to be a part of the Alaska story. And I am grateful to the Governor and the people of Alaska for the opportunity to serve.”
NAFUSA welcomed several new members in August, all of whom served during the Biden
Administration. We look forward to having them as members and hope to see them in
October at the NAFUSA annual conference at the Willard!
Erek Barron was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland from 2021 to 2025, the first
African American to hold that position. Prior to his nomination by President Biden, Barron
served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, while practicing law as a private
attorney. Before entering elected office, he served as a prosector at the state and federal
levels and worked as a policy advisor in the U.S. Senate. He joined the law firm Mintz,
Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo in May 2025.
Delia L. Smith served as the U.S. Attorney for the Virgin Islands from 2022 to April 2025. Her
career prior to that included serving as law clerk for Judge Ishmael Meyers on the U.S.
Virgin Islands Superior Court; serving as an assistant attorney general in the Office of the
Attorney General for the Virgin Islands; a detail as a trial attorney in the Office of
International Affairs at DOJ; and from 2005 until sworn in as U.S. Attorney, serving as an
AUSA in that office.
Sayler A. Fleming served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri from her
appointment by then-Attorney General William Barr in December 2020 until her resignation
on June 3, 2025. A 2006 Vanderbilt University law graduate, she clerked for Missouri
Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Limbaugh, Jr. and was later an associate at Bryan CaveLeighton Paisner before her appointment at U.S. Attorney. While U.S. Attorney she co-
chaired the Attorney General’s Child Exploitation Working Group.
Joshua (Josh) Hurwit served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Idaho from 2022 to 2025.
After graduating from Harvard in 2006, he worked as an associate at Paul Weiss, Rifkind,
Wharton & Garrison in New York City before becoming a judicial law clerk for Federal Judge
Naomi Reice Buchwald for a year. He was in private practice from 2008 until 2011 before
joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Idaho as an AUSA in 2012. In 2022 he was nominated
and later confirmed as U.S. Attorney for that office and served until his resignation in
February 2025.
Philip R. Sellinger served as U.S. attorney for District of New Jersey from 2021 to 2025.
Following graduation from New York University School of Law in 1979, he served as a
judicial law clerk for a year before becoming an AUSA in New Jersey from 1981 to 1984.
From 1984 to 2002, he worked at Sills Cummis & Gross until becoming a co-managing
partner of Greenberg Traurig in 2002. He was sworn in as U.S. Attorney for the District of NJin December 2021 and served until his resignation in January 2025. He is currently co-
chair, Global Litigation at Greenberg Traurig.
Sports law will be on tap at the 2025 Annual NAFUSA Conference in D.C. in October! Recent developments in the world of college sports, including the legal and practical issues surrounding name, image and likeness (NIL) agreements and the creation of the College Sports Commission, are hot issues in sports AND legal environments. How will college sports be impacted? What roles will attorneys have in advising athletes or other affected clients? What will regulations look like? These and so many other questions surrounding the “ever-changing landscape of college athletics” will be addressed in two separate sessions on NAFUSA’s conference program next month in D.C.
On Thursday, October 9, Jay Bilas, ESPN’s top college basketball analyst, widely known for his thorough knowledge of the game and his professional, clever style, will be interviewed by NAFUSA Vice President Tim Purdon. Jay was a four-year starter at Duke University under Mike Krzyzewski helping to lead Duke to the No. 1 ranking in 1986 and set the NCAA record for the most wins in a single season. While a player at Duke, he was appointed to the NCAA’s Long-Range Planning Committee., serving from 1984-1986.
He played professionally before returning to Duke in 1990 and attending Duke Law School while serving as an assistant coach under Krzyzewski. During that time the Blue Devils won back-to-back National Championships in 1991 and 1992.
Jay has spoken and lectured at Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, SMU’s Maguire Center for Ethics, The University of North Carolina, Tennessee, and many other great schools. His extensive knowledge of both the sports and legal worlds and his witty style have made him a very popular speaker. He has won too many awards and accolades to list here – including being named Sports Illustrated Best Analyst in College Basketball three times. And he is a practicing attorney.
It will be interesting to hear more about Jay Bilas’s exciting career during Tim’s interview and to hear his thoughts about NIL, what the impact on college sports has been so far, his prediction for the future and where it stands today. The interview will discuss the legal implications of NIL and the new sports commission.
The next day, NAFUSA Board Member Conner Eldridge will lead a panel of experts who are very familiar with the legal and practical implications of NIL, the College Sports Commission and potential impact of revenue sharing on Division One athletic programs and universities. The panel is entitled, “Show Me the Money: The Current and Everchanging Landscape of Collegiate Athletics, NIL, and Thoughts on Justice in College Sports.”
The panel will include former NAFUSA board members Ron Machen and Greg Brower and NAFUSA member Dan French. They each bring a wealth of knowledge and interesting viewpoints to different aspects of the issues surrounding collegiate sports today. Greg Brower served as the Chief Global Compliance Officer of Wynn Resorts, a publicly-trading hospitality and gaming company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and brings his knowledge of the legal gambling industry to the discussion of its potential impact on college sports. Ron Machen is an experienced and well-regarded litigator specializing in representing clients, including the NCAA, in complex high-stakes situations. Dan French has a distinguished career spanning multiple related fields within the legal profession. Prior to his current position as co-chair of Barclay Damon’s Higher Education and White Collar & Government Investigations Practice, he was the senior vice president and general counsel at Syracuse University.
Many thanks to our Conference Committee for bringing these and the other great presentations to the line-up for NAFUSA’s 2025 Annual Conference.
NAFUSA lifetime member and president-elect Catherine Hanaway will become the first
woman to hold the position of Attorney General (AG) for the State of Missouri when she
assumes office on September 8. Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe announced on August 19
he will appoint Catherine Hanaway to replace and complete the three years remaining on
the term of current AG Andrew Bailey who resigned to become co-deputy director of the
FBI.
Ms. Hanaway most recently has been a partner at Husch Blackwell, including serving as
the elected chair of the firm. She was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of
Missouri by President George W. Bush and served from 2005-2009.
Ms. Hanaway first ran for elected office in 1998, winning a seat in the Missouri House of
Representatives where she served until 2005. She was elected Speaker, the first woman to
hold that position. There have been none since. She ran unsuccessfully for Missouri
Secretary of State in 2004.
Governor Kehoe praised her as “…a talented, trusted prosecutor who has a passion for
enforcing the rule of law.”
Ms. Hanaway told reporters that she plans to serve the next three years and then “…if
Missourians will vote for me and believe I earn a full term, then I’d like to serve a full term.”
NAFUSA President Donna Bucella congratulated Catherine on her appointment. “She is a
true public servant who is passionate, committed and thrilled to serve the people of
Missouri.
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