Cheryl O'Connor is an accomplished trial lawyer who focuses on complex business litigation, internal corporate investigations, and white-collar criminal defense. She has been lead counsel in more than a dozen federal trials and has argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals numerous times.

Prior to joining Jones Day, Cheryl served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Central District of California, where she was widely recognized as one of the top trial lawyers in the Central District. She was lead trial counsel on the largest and most complex human trafficking case brought in Southern California, which resulted in guilty verdicts against all defendants, and for which she received the 2009 Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service. Cheryl also tried white-collar cases, convicted two public relations executives of defrauding the DWP (the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power), the Port of Los Angeles, and several private entities and obtained guilty verdicts for tax evasion against a criminal defense attorney. She also led dozens of complex grand jury and wiretap investigations, supervised other prosecutors' case development and trial work, and taught criminal trial advocacy at the National Advocacy Center. In addition, Cheryl served as Deputy Chief of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section for two years.

Upon graduation from law school, Cheryl was an associate in the Los Angeles office of a major law firm, where she worked on an 11-week, $234 million antitrust trial involving commercial aircraft inertial navigation systems.

Cheryl lived in Iwakuni, Japan for four years as a child.