A partner in the Litigation Department since 1999, Mary Spearing focuses her practice on white collar criminal defense, internal investigations and corporate compliance counseling. Mary has amassed a broad range of experience from her government experience to the boardroom. She has tried more than 35 cases to verdict. Her clients have included corporations, officers, directors and professionals in regulatory, investigative and trial matters. She has litigated for the government and the defense in numerous state and federal courts. She has been hired by audit committees or special committees of public companies across a range of industries to conduct investigations into allegations of wrongdoing.

Mary joined Baker Botts after serving in the government for 17 years. Immediately prior to joining the firm, Mary was Chief of the Fraud Section at the Department of Justice, where she was responsible for overseeing 80 lawyers in the most nationally significant complex investigations and prosecutions of securities, health care, bank fraud, defense procurement fraud and corporate matters. She supervised all FCPA prosecutions nationwide, negotiated major global settlements of health care matters, including the HCA and NME cases, led the prosecution of Mark Whitacre, the Archer Daniels Midland executive, led the criminal inquiry into possible perjury and fraud by tobacco companies and their CEOs and supervised the Lockheed Martin FCPA prosecution.

In addition to case-related responsibilities in the Fraud Section, she conducted special projects at the request of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General involving the Oklahoma City Bombing Case and the Ruby Ridge standoff, had significant policy responsibilities including serving as a member of the FBI Undercover Committee and joint DOJ-HHS and DOJ-SEC task forces and working groups regarding enforcement, acted as liaison to the Attorney General’s U.S. Attorney’s Advisory Group and chaired the department Working Group on developing “Principles of Corporate Prosecution,” known as the Holder Memo.

Her other Justice Department service included serving as Chief of the General Litigation Section for 3 years, Deputy Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section for 2 years, and 8 years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania, where she tried numerous cases and argued appeals.

She has been named each year one of the country’s top lawyers in The Best Lawyers in America, The Washingtonian Magazine’s Top Lawyers, Washington Post’s Superlawyers of DC and The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers.

Mary is a frequent speaker on white collar topics at numerous ABA, international conferences and industry programs. She has been a litigation guest lecturer at white collar seminars at Georgetown University Law School and American University’s law school.