Matthew S. Axelrod

Matt is a White Collar Defense and Investigations partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson Dunn and serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s Sanctions and Export Enforcement practice. Matt is a nationally recognized white collar defense lawyer with deep criminal, export control, and national security enforcement experience. Matt’s practice focuses on white collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and compliance counseling for U.S. and foreign institutions and executives.

From 2021-2025, Matt served as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), where he led a team of over 200 special agents, analysts and compliance specialists dedicated to enforcing the country’s export control laws. In that capacity, Matt and his team worked to prevent the export of sensitive goods and technologies that could be used by nation-state adversaries to modernize their militaries or commit human rights abuses, worked to ensure that U.S. persons did not participate in unsanctioned foreign boycotts, and brought a record number of criminal and administrative enforcement actions, including the highest standalone administrative penalty in the agency’s history. During his tenure, Matt also co-led the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, an interagency law enforcement initiative that targeted illicit actors, protected supply chains, and prevented critical technology from being acquired by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.

Matt also spent over thirteen years at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), including as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, where he advised the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General on DOJ’s most sensitive matters, including its most consequential criminal and national security corporate enforcement matters. As an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Florida, Matt conducted nineteen felony jury trials and handled some of the office’s most high-profile cases, including the convictions of two founders of the Cali Cartel. Matt also previously served as Special Counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office, where he advised on national security and domestic issues.

Matt also previously practiced for four years as a partner at another major international law firm, where he represented companies and individuals in internal investigations and government enforcement matters.

Matt graduated from Amherst College and Yale Law School, where he served as Notes Editor for the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Ralph K. Winter, Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for the Honorable Janet C. Hall on the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Capabilities

• White Collar Defense and Investigations
• Crisis Management
• International Trade Advisory and Enforcement
• National Security
• Sanctions and Export Enforcement
• Tech and Innovation

Credentials

Education:

• Yale University - 1997 Juris Doctor
• Amherst College - 1992 Bachelor of Arts

Admissions:

• District of Columbia Bar
• Massachusetts Bar

Clerkships:

• USDC, Connecticut, Hon. Janet C. Hall, 1998 - 1999
• US Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, Hon. Ralph K. Winter Jr., 1997 - 1998