Joanna C. Hendon

Partner

Joanna C. Hendon is a partner in Morgan Lewis's Litigation Practice. Ms. Hendon's practice focuses on complex civil litigation, white collar criminal matters, and regulatory enforcement actions.

Ms. Hendon has more than 20 years' experience representing corporations and individuals in civil litigation, including trial, and in investigations and prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), local prosecutors, and state Attorneys General. She has represented clients in cases involving allegations of insider trading and other violations of the securities laws, off-label marketing by pharmaceutical companies, antitrust violations, conflicts of interest, perjury, bribery, obstruction, tax fraud, money laundering, and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In 2011, Ms. Hendon tried the first "expert network" criminal insider trading case brought in the Southern District of New York.

Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Ms. Hendon was a partner in the New York office of a national law firm. Prior to that she was an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) for the Southern District of New York. As an AUSA, Ms. Hendon was a member of the Southern District's Securities & Commodities Fraud Task Force, where she was the lead prosecutor in numerous jury trials and complex investigations. In 2000, Ms. Hendon received the U.S. Attorney General's John Marshall Award for Outstanding Legal Achievement for Trial of Litigation, the Department of Justice's highest honor for the trial of a case.

 Representative criminal and regulatory matters include:

• Defense of the CEO of a biotechnology company in criminal and civil insider trading charges in the Southern District of New York.
• Defense of a hedge fund in Galleon criminal insider trading investigation in the Southern District of New York.
• Defense of current and former employees of two national pharmaceutical companies in criminal investigations of alleged off-label marketing and related civil litigation.
• Defense of employees of a U.K. bank in criminal investigation concerning Internet gambling.
• Defense of the CFO of an insurance company in criminal and civil securities fraud investigations in the Southern District of New York and the SEC.
• Defense of a senior executive of an investment bank in SEC, New York Stock Exchange, and New York Attorney General investigations concerning market timing and the late trading of mutual fund securities.

After completing law school, Ms. Hendon served as a law clerk to Judge Frank M. Coffin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1991, where she was notes editor for the Yale Law Journal, and her B.A. (Hon.) in English from the University of British Columbia in 1987, where she was the valedictorian of the Faculty of Arts.

Ms. Hendon is an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where she teaches a course in insider trading and other securities fraud issues. For the past five years she has served as the co-chair of the White Collar Litigation Subcommittee of the NYSBA.