Gary Y. Leung Partner

Gary is a litigator and trial attorney who has represented clients in federal and state courts across the country, and he is a former senior officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with rare cradle-to-grave experience leading both pre-filing investigations by the SEC as well as the litigation of the SEC’s contested, and most difficult, cases to summary judgment or jury verdict in federal court. He brings deep enforcement experience, complex civil litigation, and trial skills to clients navigating government investigations and regulatory inquiries, capital markets compliance issues, enforcement actions by the government, and high-stakes commercial litigation.

Securities Enforcement and Regulatory Counseling

In his last government role, Gary served as an Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement and Regional Director of the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office. As co-chief of the Los Angeles office’s enforcement program and the regional director for operations at the SEC’s third-largest regional office, he supervised more than 70 investigative attorneys, litigators, and enforcement accountants responsible for investigating and litigating federal securities law violations across Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, and Guam. He collaborated with SEC staff across the agency’s regulatory divisions, its regional offices, and at the SEC’s home office in Washington, D.C. Gary’s investigative docket included matters concerning public company financial reporting and disclosure, securities registration and offering fraud, insider trading, market manipulation, private funds, investment advisers and broker-dealers, anti-money laundering enforcement, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Gary also has significant experience conducting parallel investigations with the Department of Justice, FBI, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, FinCEN, and state and foreign regulators.

Asset Management Enforcement and Regulation

Earlier in his government service, Gary’s enforcement docket focused on the asset management industry. He was previously an Assistant Director in the SEC Enforcement Division’s specialized Asset Management Unit, and in that role, he supervised teams of investigative attorneys, industry experts, and enforcement accountants focused on investment adviser misconduct and other regulatory violations involving registered investment companies (mutual funds, closed-end funds/BDCs, and ETFs), private funds (private equity, venture capital, real estate, and hedge funds), and separately managed accounts. When working matters for that specialized unit, Gary closely collaborated with the SEC’s Division of Investment Management and Division of Examinations.

Government and Private Securities Litigation

Gary’s SEC tenure also included a leadership role in the SEC’s trial unit. As the Los Angeles office’s Regional Trial Counsel, he supervised all litigated enforcement actions brought by that regional office from filing to jury verdict and led its emergency action practice, securing temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions to halt fraudulent securities offerings, freeze assets, and appoint equity receivers for the benefit of defrauded investors.

Gary began his SEC career as a trial attorney and he litigated dozens of cases in California, Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona, and New York federal courts involving financial accounting and non-accounting issuer disclosure fraud, insider trading, investment adviser breaches of fiduciary duty, securities registration violations, and securities offering frauds. In his time with the SEC’s trial unit, he tried SEC enforcement actions to jury verdict and bench decision, he deposed or defended at deposition 100+ defendants, relief defendants, fact witnesses, and expert witnesses, and he briefed and argued scores of motions on the pleadings, discovery motions, summary judgment motions, motions in limine, Daubert motions, remedies motions, and ex parte applications for emergency injunctive relief.

Prior to joining the SEC, Gary was a member of the McGuireWoods team who defended a multi-district litigation that consolidated putative class actions for securities fraud, breach of fiduciary duty under ERISA, and shareholder derivative claims arising from an alleged fraudulent financial reporting and executive looting scheme by management of an international conglomerate.

Complex Commercial Litigation

Before his government service, Gary was a partner at McGuireWoods, where he litigated complex commercial matters in jurisdictions across the nation. His commercial litigation matters included class action defense of FCRA and FACTA claims, patent infringement matters involving foundry, lamination, and mechanical support technologies, defense of false patent marking claims, trademark counterfeiting and unfair competition, commercial litigation over breaches of drug development agreements, patent licenses, natural resources royalty contracts, and intellectual property transfer agreements, and labor and employment disputes involving non-competition covenants.

Gary began his legal career as a business litigation and appellate attorney in Chicago.