Michel Nicrosi is a partner with Jones Walker LLP and works out of the firm's office in Mobile, Alabama. She focuses her practice on preventive and litigation services for businesses and individuals in corporate and white-collar criminal matters. Her practice includes traditional criminal defense work as well as corporate compliance matters and commercial litigation. She has handled several internal investigations for public companies as well as for municipalities. Her commercial litigation work focuses on creditor's rights in both state and federal courts.
Michel served as a federal prosecutor for more than 16 years. After graduating from The University of Alabama School of Law, she joined the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC. Michel was appointed to the Department of Justice under the Attorney General's Honor Program, the department's premier recruitment program. For several years, she served as a trial attorney in the Southern Criminal Enforcement Section of the Tax Division, prosecuting white-collar criminal cases with an emphasis on tax fraud and other financial crimes in several states throughout the country.
In 1995, Michel transferred to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Alabama, where she continued to handle white-collar cases involving fraud, public corruption, and cybercrime. From 1997 to 2001, she served as chief of the criminal division in the US Attorney's Office. In this position, she was responsible for supervising criminal attorneys and managing criminal litigation for the judicial district. In 2006, Michel successfully defended the former chief of staff to the governor of Alabama in the most significant public corruption trial in Alabama's history. After a nine-week trial, a federal jury acquitted the former official on all charges, including RICO violations, mail and wire fraud, and obstruction of justice.
In 2010, Michel was a candidate for state attorney general in Alabama. She was the first woman to run for this position in the state’s history. Her candidacy was endorsed by a number of major newspapers across the state.