Jon Katz is a criminal defense and civil liberties attorney based in Fairfax, Virginia. He started his criminal career in 1991 with the Maryland Public Defender’s Office (1991-96) after an early stint handling civil litigation and regulatory work with a great corporate law firm team (1989-91). Jon graduated from a highly-ranked law school and college — George Washington University Law School (J.D. 1989) and Tufts University (B.A., cum laude, 1985). After highly-competitive selection processes, he attended the premier two-week Trial Practice Institute of the National Criminal Defense College (1994) and the four-week Trial Lawyers College (1995) at the ranch of premier trial lawyer Gerry Spence, who taught at the college nearly every weekday.

After two subsequent years with a local trial law firm (1996-98), Jon became his own boss with his former law partner Jay Marks (1998-2008), serving as the firm’s criminal law partner. Jon then formed his current law firm in 2008.

During the year between college and law school, Jon worked as a financial examiner at Wall Street’s Irving Trust Company, including reviewing for compliance with money laundering laws, against fraud and theft, and for sound financial practices. Work at Irving Trust took Jon from as close as Rockefeller Center, to upstate New York, and as far Japan and Hong Kong. The Northern Virginia area teems with immigrants and speakers of English as a second language. Jon relishes such an exciting population diversity, and accommodates his non-U.S. citizen clients by keeping abreast of immigration risks from criminal court outcomes, and by speaking fluent French and proficient Spanish.