Maya James specializes in defending against criminal prosecutions and investigations, high-stakes commercial litigation, and government enforcement actions in state and federal courts nationwide. She has extensive experience with bet-the-company and competitor litigation, including in unfair competition, fraud, breach of contract, trade secret, and antitrust matters. Representative victories include securing a sweeping injunction to protect her client’s trade secrets (prompting the defendant to voluntarily take its most profitable products off the market); shielding a high-profile bank executive from criminal and civil liability; invalidating nearly all of the purported trade secrets and patents that her client’s longtime licensing partner had tried to assert in order to extract higher royalty payments; convincing the DOJ to drop an antitrust investigation into her client; and defeating criminal subpoenas that posed an existential threat to her client, a nonprofit organization.

In addition to her commercial practice, Maya is deeply committed to her pro bono practice, representing indigent criminal defendants in proceedings to vacate murder convictions secured under a California felony-murder statute that has since been reformed. She established a unique pro bono partnership between our firm and public defender offices in California to help vacate felony murder convictions, through which the firm has successfully vacated convictions for seven individuals who have since been released from prison.

Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Maya served as a law clerk to Judge Jesus G. Bernal of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Maya earned her J.D. from Stanford Law School and earned her undergraduate degree with distinction and Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford.

Cases of Note

  • Nonprofit Institute v. Pharmaceutical Company

    We represented a nonprofit research institute in its lawsuit against a giant pharmaceutical company regarding the latter’s refusal to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties it was owed…

  • Semiconductor Company v. Supplier

    Following multi-stage arbitration proceedings between our client, one of the world’s largest technology companies, and a company that had licensed certain technology to it through a complex licensing agreement, we…

  • United States v. Executive

    We represented a senior executive of a national bank in an investigation involving three United States Attorneys’ Offices, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Office…

  • Genentech v. JHL Biotech

    We represented Genentech as the victim of a massive trade secret theft by its former scientists and founders of JHL Biotech, which was developing biosimilar versions of Genentech’s cancer medicines….

  • RingCentral, Inc. v. Dialpad, Inc.

    We successfully defended cloud-based telephony and unified messaging provider Dialpad in a patent infringement action brought by competitor RingCentral in the Northern District of California. Dialpad obtained a ruling that…

  • United States v. Founder

    We represented a founder of a sustainable foods company in a criminal antitrust investigation. Following discussions and presentations to the DOJ, the investigation was dropped; no charges were filed.

  • People of the State of California v. Prisoner

    Our client was sentenced to death at age 25 for his participation in a robbery in which his co-defendant unexpectedly shot and killed the victim. After a two-day trial in…

  • People v. Miles

    We secured the release of Gennel Miles, Jr., who had spent 16 years in prison on a life sentence without parole on a murder conviction obtained under California’s former felony-murder…

News & Events

Publications & Speaking Engagements

Disarming the Trial Penalty, One Sentencing Guideline at a Time, The Champion, April 2026, co-authored with Steven Ragland and Max Alderman

“Trade Secret Litigation in the Age of AI,” Keker, Van Nest & Peters CLE Annual Workshop, March 2026

SCOTUS Favors Napue Over Brady in Rare Death Penalty Reversal in Glossip,” Daily Journal, March 2025, co-authored with Max Alderman

Presenter, “Trade Secret Year in Review,” Berkeley Center for Technology and Law, 2022

“Combatting Police Discrimination in the Age of Big Data,” Sharad Goel, Maya Perelman, Ravi Shroff, & David Alan Sklansky, 20 NEW CRIM. L. REV