Brady C. Williamson

Remembering Brady

We are saddened to share the passing of Brady Williamson on Sunday, February 16. Brady was a distinguished attorney, widely recognized for his exceptional work in appellate advocacy and constitutional law. Throughout his career, he handled significant cases across state and federal courts, including successful arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court.

More than his professional achievements, Brady was a valued member of our firm, and his presence will be profoundly missed. Our firm mourns this great loss, and we extend our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and all who had the privilege of working with him.
 

Brady Williamson was a constitutional and corporate litigator who taught periodically at the University of Wisconsin Law School for more than three decades. He successfully represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court and often appeared in federal and state appellate courts on constitutional issues. Since October 2017, he served as the court-appointed fee examiner in the $120 billion PROMESA reorganization proceedings for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

In 2023, Brady taught a new course, “Courts and Constitutions,” at the University of California-Berkeley which combined U.S. constitutional law, state constitutional law, and a sampling of constitutions in other countries. He also continued his pro bono litigation and student collaboration project with the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale University Law School.

He has long been involved in constitutional and election law projects in West Africa, Iraq, Southern Sudan, Egypt and Bangladesh, traveling frequently to work with the committees drafting new national and regional constitutions. His pro bono constitutional work has been sponsored by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a nonprofit organization working to strengthen democracy worldwide.

In the United States, Brady’s legal practice focused on appellate advocacy, corporate law, and reorganization. He successfully argued and won a U.S. Supreme Court case that addressed the relationship between federal and state law and litigated a wide range of Equal Protection, Due Process, and First Amendment cases including several media defamation cases in 2020.

Brady was a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, whose membership is limited to academics, judges, and practitioners with a focus on bankruptcy law. He was also a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute and the American College of Bankruptcy and, beginning in 2020, a contributing editor to Collier on Bankruptcy, the leading bankruptcy treatise. He served on several public advisory committees to help evaluate federal judicial nominees. In 1996, Brady was appointed by the President of the United States to chair the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, which submitted its comprehensive recommendations to Congress, the Chief Justice and the President.

In 2009, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York appointed him an examiner in the General Motors reorganization cases. Since then, the firm and Brady also have served as counsel to the Fee Committee in the Lehman Brothers Chapter 11 proceedings and the Fee Committee in the Energy Future Holdings Corp. proceedings, along with more recent cases in Delaware.