Covington & Burling LLP operates as a limited liability partnership worldwide, with the practice in England and Wales conducted by an affiliated
limited liability multinational partnership, Covington & Burling LLP, which is formed under the laws of the State of Delaware in the United States
and authorized and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with registration number 77071..
Brian Williams provides counsel to clients on all facets of a wide range of U.S. regulatory processes at the intersection of law, cross-border investment, technology, and national security. This includes the transactional review process administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and related national security and law enforcement reviews conducted by the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector (known informally as “Team Telecom”) that involve foreign applicants for certain categories of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) telecommunications licenses.
He has assisted dozens of clients on both the buy and sell sides across a tremendous range of industry sectors (including AI, semiconductors, robotics, advanced transportation technologies, life sciences, and healthcare, as well as telecommunications, energy, and financial services infrastructure, products, and services) successfully evaluate and navigate these review processes to realize their transactional goals. Brian also has extensive experience successfully advising sovereign, private equity, and other fund clients on the unique challenges and opportunities they may face when coming before these regulatory regimes.
Brian also advises clients on related emerging areas of U.S. national security regulation, including the Department of Justice’s Data Security Program; the Department of Commerce’s Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS) and related rules (including the Connected Vehicle rule); and the Department of the Treasury’s Outbound Investment Rule.
Brian draws on expertise developed over 30 years of public and private sector service, including as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. After the conclusion of his military service, Brian spent over a decade advising a variety of U.S. government clients on issues related to national security, technology, commerce, and law. He is the principal architect of the risk framework that became the de facto standard for all transactional risk assessments conducted by CFIUS and Team Telecom and has counseled the most senior officials at the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security on how to identify, assess, and address potential national security risks potentially posed by foreign investments, acquisitions, and collaborations. He led multi-agency analytic teams that authored the majority of CFIUS and Team Telecom risk assessments during his tenure, while providing the U.S. Government diligence, risk analysis, and mitigation strategy development and negotiation support on nearly 1,700 CFIUS transactions and over 1,000 FCC license applications before Team Telecom.
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