Keker, Van Nest & Peters is pleased to announce that the firm has elevated associates Andrew Bruns, Cody Gray, Maya James, Christina Lee, and Franco Muzzio to Partner, Kristen Lovin to Of Counsel and Senior IP & Technology Litigator and Hamilton Jordan to Of Counsel, effective January 1, 2024. This class marks the largest group of associates promoted to partner since the firm was founded in 1978.
“Our new partners and of counsel are extraordinary lawyers who have made innumerable contributions to the firm and to our clients. They are committed to collaboration, providing exceptional client service, mentoring junior lawyers, and dedicating time to pro bono efforts—all values that define our firm,” Keker, Van Nest & Peters Managing Partner Laurie Carr Mims said. “It makes me proud to watch them take on leadership roles in our case teams and develop into our firm’s next generation of trial lawyers.”
Andy Bruns represents clients in complex commercial litigation, including patent and intellectual property disputes, and white collar criminal defense. He has experience defending clients in the technology, life sciences, sports, and digital currency sectors in litigation arising in both state and federal courts, as well as in arbitration.
Andy has served as an active member of several trial teams, including representing the former CEO of Bumble Bee Foods in a five-week jury trial involving price-fixing allegations. He is also defending successive generations of Dexcom products in parallel cases where Abbott is asserting over a dozen patents targeting Dexcom’s continuous glucose monitoring technology for addressing diabetes. He is part of a Keker team representing Google against Singular in a two-patent trial in the District of Massachusetts related to specialized chips used for machine learning.
Andy maintains an active pro bono practice representing incarcerated individuals in resentencing proceedings. He has worked extensively with the Giffords Law Center on gun violence prevention initiatives, and has partnered with the ACLU and the National Association of Public Defense on amicus briefs before the U.S. and California Supreme Courts.
Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Andy served as a law clerk to Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and Judge Ronald Gilman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Andy earned his J.D. from Columbia Law School and his undergraduate degree from Amherst College.
Cody Gray represents publicly-traded corporations, private companies, and individuals in high-stakes commercial litigation, criminal investigations, and trials.
He has served as an active member of several Keker trial teams, including defending a San Francisco real estate broker in a federal criminal trial that resulted in no jail time; defending the former CFO of a British software company in a nine-week trial involving accounting fraud charges; and defending a Coachella Valley real estate developer who is accused of paying bribes to a former Palm Springs Mayor. Cody’s recent civil experience includes representing a leading software company in a breach of contract matter; a chip design company in copyright and patent infringement litigation; and a marketing platform in a putative class action involving right-of-publicity claims.
Cody maintains an active pro bono practice centered on civil rights, voting, and indigent criminal defense. He recently represented an inmate alleging an Eighth Amendment claim against a yard gunner at San Quentin State Prison and obtained a favorable settlement after winning a key motion to compel prior to trial. Cody also regularly represents indigent clients charged with drug and other offenses in matters referred to the firm by the Northern District of California’s Criminal Justice Act panel.
Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Cody served as a law clerk to Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Cody earned his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, his Ph.D. and M.A. in politics from Princeton University, and his B.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Maya James represents clients in the life sciences, technology, sustainability, and financial services industries in high-stakes commercial litigation and in government enforcement actions in state and federal courts.
Maya has served as an active member of several Keker trial teams, including representing Genentech in a federal trade secret suit against its former scientists (founders of JHL Biotech) who stole proprietary information to develop biosimilar versions of Genentech medicines. The firm won a preliminary injunction that led to a settlement in which JHL abandoned development of its biosimilars, destroyed related cell lines, stipulated to a permanent injunction, and reimbursed Genentech for legal fees. In her white collar practice, she has successfully represented clients in connection with DOJ investigations, including by shielding a senior banking executive from criminal and SEC charges and securing the dismissal of a parallel civil suit against her client. Her current work includes an arbitration to resolve a royalty dispute over flash memory technology, in which she helped her client obtain a very favorable interim award that significantly limits its exposure.
Maya also maintains an active 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 Keker and public defender offices in California to help vacate felony murder convictions, and the firm has successfully vacated convictions for six individuals who have since been, or will soon be, 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 graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in philosophy.
Christina Lee represents plaintiffs and defendants in high-stakes civil litigation matters, including in intellectual property disputes, complex privacy cases, and commercial litigation. Her clients range from individuals and startups to major technology companies.
Christina has served as an active member of several Keker trial teams. She represented the former shareholders of FerroKin BioSciences against Shire Pharmaceuticals in a bench trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery, which awarded the firm’s clients more than $80 million, including an overdue milestone payment, attorney’s fees, and interest. She has successfully represented Google in multiple putative class action lawsuits asserting privacy, contract, and consumer law claims regarding Google’s alleged data collection practices, in each case obtaining dismissals of entire complaints or critical claims. Her current work includes defending Netflix in several significant patent cases brought by Broadcom involving various video technologies.
Christina maintains a robust pro bono practice. In collaboration with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union, she is currently representing three immigrant families who were separated at the United States-Mexico border in 2018 in a federal lawsuit seeking damages in the Northern District of California. She has also represented several leading immigration nonprofit organizations in advocating for changes to immigration law and policy.
Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Christina served as a law clerk to Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and to Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Christina earned her J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and her B.A. in history, summa cum laude, from Yale.
Franco Muzzio specializes in high-stakes litigation in state and federal court. His clients include technology companies, professional sports leagues, investors, and criminal defendants.
Franco’s recent work includes successfully representing Oregon State University in a lawsuit against the Pac-12 Conference to determine control of the conference in the wake of ten member institutions announcing their departures from the Pac-12. He was part of a team that represented the PGA Tour in an antitrust lawsuit filed by golfers who left the TOUR to join LIV Golf, and he has represented Major League Baseball in several matters. Franco also helped secure a complete victory for LinkedIn in a putative class action concerning claims related to online advertising metrics, and he represented several Netflix executives and employees as third-party witnesses in a two-week federal court trial. He has had a leading role in several KVP trial teams, including a human rights case that resulted in the 5th largest jury verdict in Florida federal court in which the firm represented the families of four political prisoners that were killed by members of the Argentine military in the 1970s.
Franco began his legal career by clerking for Judge Susan P. Graber of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Virginia A. Phillips of the Central District of California. Before law school, he spent several years teaching high school English in the Spanish Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He earned his law degree from UCLA School of Law and his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Kristen Lovin represents clients in high-stakes litigation encompassing a broad range of intellectual property, data privacy, and licensing disputes. She leverages her computer science and electrical engineering background and over a decade of litigation experience to develop winning liability strategies that are rooted in a deep understanding of her clients’ technology and business. She has litigated cases in California, Delaware, Texas, and the ITC, and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
Kristen has been an active member of several Keker trial teams, including representing Ivantis Inc., the maker of a revolutionary eye stent designed to treat glaucoma, in a case brought by competitor Glaukos Corporation alleging infringement of two of Glaukos’ patents. She served on a team defending Varian Medical Systems, a world leader in radiotherapy medical devices for the treatment of cancer, in the District of Delaware against patent-infringement claims brought by Best Medical International. She has also represented Google against an eight-patent case related to voice detection and microphone arrays against Jawbone, and is defending Google in a five-patent case filed by Wildseed Mobile, which accuses pixel phones, YouTube, Google search and ad targeting. Kristen is also defending Netflix, Inc. in multiple patent suits brought by Broadcom, which involve complex video technologies such as entropy encoding, adaptive streaming, and distributed software deployment. Kristen also represents X in a licensing and patent dispute against Adeia.
Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Kristen served as a law clerk to Judge Sharon Prost of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She also served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Davila of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and as the patent law clerk to Judge Davila, Judge Lucy Koh, and Judge Beth Freeman. Kristen earned her J.D. from Columbia Law School, her master’s in computer science from Harvard University, and her A.B. cum laude in electrical and computer engineering from Harvard.
Before law school, Kristen worked for several years in the Windows Division at Microsoft, where she led a team of development and test engineers to enhance application compatibility tools.
Hamilton Jordan focuses his practice on complex civil litigation, and has litigated disputes in state and federal courts, as well as arbitration.
In a high-stakes arbitration about self-driving vehicle technology, Hamilton helped secure one of California’s top verdicts of the year on behalf of his client, who sought to hold two former senior employees accountable for unfair competition and for breaching contract and tort duties. Following a two-week hearing, an arbitration panel awarded a nine-figure award, which Hamilton helped convert into a judgment in California Superior Court.
Hamilton has also served as appointed counsel for criminal defendants in state and federal courts. In one such case, Hamilton won a significant victory for his client before the Michigan Court of Appeals, which held that Hamilton’s client—who had been wrongfully convicted of murder and incarcerated for over a decade—was entitled to a new trial.
A graduate of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Hamilton clerked for Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and then-Judge Neil M. Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
About Keker, Van Nest & Peters
For more than 45 years, Keker, Van Nest & Peters has litigated complex, high-stakes civil and criminal cases throughout the nation. The firm takes the cases where companies, products, and careers are riding on the result. Our clients are high-profile individuals, as well as some of the world’s most successful companies, including Genentech, Google, Instacart, Lyft, Major League Baseball, Meta, Netflix and Qualcomm. The firm’s areas of expertise include intellectual property, professional liability, class actions, commercial litigation, antitrust, white-collar defense, and appellate.