WASHINGTON, D.C.—Venable LLP is pleased to announce that Thomas E. Perez has joined the firm as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office. Mr. Perez previously served as the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and as secretary of labor and assistant attorney general for civil rights under President Barack Obama.
As chair of the DNC, Mr. Perez oversaw the rebuilding of the organization’s infrastructure and implementation of vital reforms, enabling the party to secure critical victories at the local, state, and national levels. As labor secretary under President Obama, Mr. Perez was a member of the president’s economic team, led a top-to-bottom transformation of the agency, and worked closely with key Department of Labor (DOL) component agencies.
Mr. Perez spent over a decade at the Justice Department during multiple administrations and multiple tours of duty, starting as a career civil rights prosecutor, deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, and ultimately leading the division during the first term of the Obama administration. During his career at the Civil Rights Division, he prosecuted and supervised the prosecution of numerous high-profile civil rights cases and handled a wide range of important civil rights matters. As assistant attorney general for civil rights, he led an expansive effort to restore and transform civil rights enforcement in a wide array of areas, oversaw an active police reform practice, reached landmark settlements to change the culture of policing in numerous cities, and settled the three largest residential fair lending cases in the history of the Fair Housing Act.
