Adam S. Hickey

Adam Hickey is a partner in Mayer Brown's Cybersecurity & Data Privacy, National Security, and Global Investigations & White Collar Defense practices. Prior to joining Mayer Brown, he was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) of the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Security Division (NSD) and an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). He focuses on cybersecurity investigations and related litigation; investigations and enforcement actions related to national security authorities like sanctions, export controls, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA); and foreign investment security reviews (e.g., CFIUS and Team Telecom).

Adam brings more than 15 years of experience at DOJ handling high-profile national security matters intersecting with the private sector. During his time at NSD, Adam established the Department’s national security cyber program, dedicated to combatting malicious cyber activity by foreign intelligence services affecting major companies and critical infrastructure, and he supervised the criminal investigation and charging of every such case for more than a decade. He was responsible for expanding DOJ’s role in assessing national security risk across hundreds of economic regulatory matters, often focusing on data security and data privacy risks, and he spearheaded reforms of DOJ’s FARA enforcement program. As DAAG, Adam led investigations of companies and foreign governments for violating U.S. laws and negotiated complex corporate resolutions, often in fraught geopolitical contexts.

During his time as an Assistant United States Attorney for SDNY, Adam focused on international narcotics trafficking, export control, terrorism, and other national security investigations. He was a member of the Guantanamo Review Task Force and was one of the prosecutors who investigated and indicted five defendants accused of conducting the September 11 attacks. He also served briefly as Deputy Chief of Appeals.

Prior to joining DOJ, Adam clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann (USCA 2d Cir.) and the Hon. Jed S. Rakoff (USDC SDNY) and worked in the litigation department of a New York law firm.