Alumni Travel Back in Time
John E. Nordin – Current Biographical Summary
Mr. Nordin did his undergraduate work at San Diego State University and received his legal training at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, California, where he was the recipient of the American Jurisprudence Award and a member of Phi Alpha Delta. He has been a law school administrator, a teacher, a partner in several firms, a civil litigator in federal and state courts, and an arbitrator and mediator. He served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles 1971 through 1975, spent 13 years in private practice, and returned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1987, where he currently serves as Assistant Chief of the Civil Division and Special Attorney to the Attorney General. In such positions he litigates and supervises the litigation of employment, tort, civil rights, environmental, immigration, and constitutional cases, and cases involving challenges to government programs and statutes. He also evaluates Department of Justice offices, trains federal attorneys and law enforcement officers, and handles special assignments involving the investigation and litigation of claims of misconduct by federal agencies throughout the country.
He is a member of the Federal Bar Association, the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, The Association for Conflict Resolution, The Southern California Mediation Association, The Los Angeles County Bar Association, Dispute Resolution Services Associates, the Orange County Bar Association, the American Bar Association (Litigation and Dispute Resolution Sections), and the California Bar Association. He is an associate member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (Legal Officers Section). He serves on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of Hastings’ 1066 Foundation.
He has been an instructor at Hastings’ Center for Trial and Appellate Advocacy, the Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute, and at the Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina, where he has served as an instructor on constitutional tort and civil rights seminars, trial advocacy programs, and alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) seminars. He has been a speaker at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia and provides legal training and training in legal aspects of the use of force to various federal law enforcement agencies. He was a member of an FBI team invited to instruct prosecutors and senior police officials in handling critical incidents in Kenya, and in Tanzania following the bombing of the U.S. embassies in those countries. He was a legal instructor for the “Managing Civil Actions in Threat Incidents: Command Course,” given under the auspices of the Office of Domestic Preparedness, Department of Homeland Security, to senior officers in state and local police departments throughout the country from 2001 – 2005.
Mr. Nordin has the distinction of twice being presented with the Department of Justice’s coveted Director’s Award by Attorney General Janet Reno. He was personally commended by President Ronald Reagan and the Director of the Secret Service. He received numerous commendations from the Special Agents-in-Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Customs Service, Forest Service Law Enforcement, and has been personally commended by the Director of the FBI on two occasions. He also received the General Counsel’s Exemplary Assistance Award from the Bureau of Prisons.
He serves as a pro bono settlement conference officer for the U.S. District Court, and has served as an arbitrator and mediator for the Los Angeles Superior Court, the American Arbitration Association, the National Association of Securities Dealers, and for the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s attorney–client fee dispute resolution program. He has been a student of mediation since 1998, has taken numerous continuing legal education courses in ADR, and is currently enrolled in a postgraduate program in ADR at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, School of Law, Pepperdine University.
