Jonathan Robell

Jonathan Robell is an assistant chief in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit of the Justice Department’s criminal division fraud section, who also serves as a judge advocate in the US Army Reserve. He was promoted in 2021 after serving as a trial attorney in the same unit.

He spent six months in 2000 as a member of former President Bill Clinton’s White House advance staff after earning his undergraduate degree in public policy studies from Duke University in 1999. Robell gained his law degree from Columbia Law School in 2004.

He started his legal career as an associate for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld between 2004 and 2008, and returned to the firm in 2010 for 18 months as counsel. His time at Akin Gump was interrupted by service for a year-and-a-half as a government appellate attorney for the US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Robell then worked as a trial attorney at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from 2011 until 2015, when he joined the DOJ’s criminal division.

While at the CFTC, Robell helped bring a case against Allied Markets and the company’s principals, Joshua Gilliland and Chawalit Wongkhiao, accused of misappropriating customer funds and operating a fraudulent Forex pool fund. The ongoing case was brought in Florida. The pair pleaded guilty to related wire fraud charges brought by the DOJ in September 2015.

Robell's experience at the CFTC has no doubt helped him while working on the DOJ's foreign bribery investigation into energy trading firms, such as Vitol.