Jessica Fender is an experienced trial lawyer who provides institutional clients, executives, and high-net-worth individuals with strategic advice on high-stakes international government investigations and enforcement actions, as well as intellectual property litigation. Ms. Fender has extensive experience working with federal and international senior law enforcement officials, prosecutors, intelligence agencies and government departments.
Before joining Kobre & Kim, Ms. Fender spent over a decade as a federal prosecutor, most recently in the Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), where she handled complex investigations related to international and domestic terrorism, sanctions and export control violations, and counter-threat financing. While at the National Security Division, Ms. Fender also served as the DOJ’s Liaison to the Joint Special Operations Command, Department of Defense.
Prior to her time with the National Security Division, Ms. Fender served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. There, she handled notable cases across units responsible for prosecuting National Security and International Narcotrafficking, Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises, and Violent and Organized Crime. She conducted numerous criminal jury trials, and briefed and argued matters before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
While serving in the DOJ, Ms. Fender volunteered her time as an Adjunct Professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she taught the Federal Criminal Prosecution Field Clinic.
Before joining the DOJ, Ms. Fender—a registered patent attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office—was an associate at Jones Day and at Schiff Hardin LLP (now ArentFox Schiff), where she focused on internal investigations and intellectual property litigation. She clerked for the Honorable Joan Gottschall of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and for the Honorable Sharon Prost of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.