J. Gordon Cooney, Jr.
Gordon Cooney defends companies and their officers and directors in some of their most significant legal and business challenges. Often, these challenges include multiple dimensions—including regulatory and criminal investigations, civil or criminal litigation by US federal and state prosecutors, class action or serial litigation by customers or other stakeholders, and shareholder and corporate governance litigation. Gordon works with companies to shape the overall strategy to successfully navigate multijurisdictional and multidisciplinary challenges. His experience has included serving as lead counsel, strategy counsel, and resolution counsel, either leading multidisciplinary teams of Morgan Lewis lawyers or working collaboratively with other law firms to help solve client challenges.
Gordon is one of the nation’s leading class action defense lawyers. His practice also includes substantial appellate, business disputes, and merger and acquisition (M&A) litigation.
Gordon has appeared in the courts of more than 35 states, and he has argued before the US Supreme Court and many federal circuit courts. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and as a “Star Individual” for Commercial Litigation in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business. The American Lawyer named Gordon “Litigator of the Week” in the summer of 1999.
For nearly 25 years, Gordon represented John Thompson, who was wrongly convicted in 1985 of murdering a New Orleans hotel executive and an unrelated armed carjacking that the prosecutors used in the murder case. Thompson faced the death sentence and 50 years in prison without parole. Over the course of 15 years of postconviction proceedings, Gordon and a Morgan Lewis team uncovered concealed blood evidence in the carjacking case, as well as witnesses and other evidence hidden from the defense. Based on the blood evidence, the carjacking conviction was vacated, and a Louisiana court ordered a new murder trial. On retrial, handled by Gordon and the Morgan Lewis team, a jury found Thompson not guilty of murder. The court released him from custody after 18 years in prison and exonerated him of any involvement in the crimes.
Gordon has held significant leadership positions within the firm, including serving for 10 years as leader of the global litigation practice and significant terms as managing partner of the Philadelphia office, an Advisory Board member, and a Compensation Committee member.
Active in civic and philanthropic organizations, Gordon also served as an adjunct law lecturer at Villanova Law School for 11 years.
