Nicolas Riley is an accomplished appellate litigator with significant experience in civil rights law. He has argued and won numerous cases in state and federal appellate courts and has represented a wide range of clients including the federal government, local governments, non-profits, universities, journalists, students, workers, protestors, and survivors of police violence.
Professor Riley currently serves as counsel at Hecker Fink LLP, where he maintains a diverse litigation docket of public-interest and commercial matters. He joined the firm following his clerkship with the Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to his clerkship, he served for three years in the Department of Justice as deputy chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Appellate Section, where he helped oversee the department’s appellate strategy in civil rights cases nationwide. In that role, he supervised appeals concerning voting rights, employment discrimination, police misconduct, disability rights, fair housing, and education equity, and counseled the division’s trial offices on complex investigations and high-profile enforcement actions.
Before joining the Civil Rights Division, he was senior counsel at Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection. There, he served as lead counsel in an array of constitutional and civil rights matters, briefed and argued several cases of first impression in trial and appellate courts, and spearheaded a novel line of cases challenging restrictions on public access to judicial proceedings and court records.
Earlier in his career, Professor Riley served as a member of the Department of Justice’s Civil Appellate Staff, where he represented federal agencies and officials in high-stakes appeals around the country. He also served as a fellow and counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, focusing on voting rights litigation. He clerked for the Honorable Sidney R. Thomas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
He received his BA, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania and his JD from Yale Law School.