Julia J. Bredrup

Julia J. Bredrup handles both the plaintiff and defense sides of civil litigation along with criminal defense work as well. The Boies Schiller Flexner LLP partner prefers not to specialize.

"A generalist is what I desire to be," she said. "I was a history major in college because it was the broadest possible subject. I could go from medieval times to America in the 1960s. In the law I get to do a broad swath of cases, and I believe my approach brings a fresher perspective to what I do."

In December 2018 she was promoted to partner while on parental leave.

"It was gratifying. Kudos to my firm for recognizing that I was ready to meet the challenges," she said. "It was a little surreal to find I was both a mom and a firm partner."

Earlier in 2018, after nearly two years of persistence using both her criminal defense and civil litigation skills, she persuaded federal officials to offer a misdemeanor resolution with no immigration consequences to Jose A. Rodriguez. The pro bono case came to the firm from the Los Angeles youth program Homeboy Industries, which aids high-risk former gang members and the recently incarcerated.

It concerned the group's Homeboy Hero recipient, Rodriguez, a legal permanent resident who, despite his work as a substance abuse and rehabilitation counselor, had recently been accused of federal unemployment benefits fraud, behavior that occurred seven years earlier while he was homeless and was emerging from decades of addiction and instability. U.S. v. Rodriguez, 2:15-cr-00323 (C.D. Cal., filed June 12, 2015).

"I was an associate when I ran that case," Bredrup said. "You can really help someone at the lowest point of their life. For me, it was a lesson in persistence. I just kept explaining what an unjust result the government was proposing."

When federal prosecutors at last agreed to settle for a misdemeanor plea, Bredrup persuaded U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt of Los Angeles to issue a three-month sentence to be served at a halfway house, allowing Rodriguez to keep his job and provide for his family.

That appeared to end the criminal matter, but the Bureau of Prisons then threatened to ignore Kronstadt's halfway house recommendation. "They claimed he was eligible for removal, which he was emphatically not," Bredrup said.

So Bredrup filed a civil action against the bureau. "We needed a leverage point," she said. Rodriguez v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2:18-cv-00812 (C.D. Cal., filed Jan. 31, 2018).

Within a day of filing, the government agreed to follow the court's recommendation. "It was somewhat rare to use civil litigation techniques in a criminal case," Bredrup said.

Bredrup graduated from Harvard Law School, then clerked for U.S. District Judge David O. Carter of Santa Ana. When she oversaw recruiting for her firm's downtown Los Angeles office, she hired former federal clerks exclusively.

"Hands down, a federal clerkship is the best job you can have out of law school," she said. "It gives you great experience early on in how judicial chambers work. That is insight I use every day in cases across the spectrum."

-- John Roemer