Joey Burby of Alston & Bird. (Courtesy photo)

White-collar defense lawyer Joey Burby, who joined Alston & Bird as a partner from Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner last week, said arriving at the firm felt like a homecoming, as he already knows many of his new law partners from his early days as an Alston associate and federal prosecutor.

Burby is Alston's latest hire for its white-collar defense and investigation group⁠—one of its key practices⁠—and gives the firm 16 lawyers with Justice Department experience. In Atlanta, Alston recruited former federal prosecutor Paul Monnin in 2017 from Paul Hastings and Larry Somerfeld from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, where he'd headed the cybercrime unit.

An experienced trial lawyer, Burby, 48, has handled a string of high-profile internal investigations and white-collar defense matters over his career, particularly for clients targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading and the Justice Department for False Claims Act violations in health care billing.

Burby was an associate at Alston until he landed a job with the Atlanta U.S. attorney's office in 2002, where he was on the team that prosecuted Centennial Olympic Park and abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph. When Burby returned to private practice in 2006, he became a partner at Powell Goldstein, which was acquired by Bryan Cave in 2009.

"Alston & Bird offered a compelling opportunity professionally and personally," Burby said. "It was a chance to join a large and very accomplished white-collar team, both in Atlanta and nationally, with many former DOJ and government officials. And it was the chance to practice with good friends, like Paul Monnin, whom I worked with at the U.S. attorney's office."

He said a lot of his friends at Alston from when he was a young associate are still there. Many are now in leadership roles, such as Kristy Brown, who co-leads Alston's litigation practice.

In a statement, Brown said Burby "brings a proven track record and strong pedigree in defending clients in contentious civil and criminal matters involving claims of fraud, corruption and other misconduct" at a time of increased enforcement activity.

Burby said Monnin and Brown played a big role in recruiting him to Alston, adding that Monnin and Brown's husband, Mike, a former Alston partner, are two of his closest friends, dating back to their days together at the U.S. attorney's office. Mike Brown co-led Alston's white-collar practice until 2018, when he became a federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia.

Investigations Experience

Alston is bringing on a partner who has worked on a series of high profile cases recently, including some that alleged misuse of public funds.

Burby spent most of his time last year leading an investigation of the University of Central Florida into the misuse of funds that had been earmarked by the Florida Legislature for operating expenses and instead were used by UCF on building projects. The Orlando college is the largest public university in the nation, with almost 70,000 students enrolled in nine locations.

After an initial engagement from the UCF Board of Trustees over one building, the board of governors for the Florida Board of Governors for the state's university system engaged Burby to investigate the entire UCF system. The probe found that UCF leaders had transferred more than $99 million in operating funds for building projects over the prior eight years, causing UCF's president, board chair, associate provost and CFO to lose their jobs.

In 2018, Burby was engaged by Equifax executive Jun Ying to defend him against insider trading charges from the SEC and the Atlanta U.S. attorney's office. They said he exercised his stock options and sold almost $1 million in stock just before Equifax reported its 2017 data breach, thereby avoiding a $117,000 loss after the breach became public and the stock price dropped.

Ying pleaded guilty, but Burby was able to negotiate a brief, four-month prison sentence. Ying also paid $117,000 in restitution, plus disgorgement and prejudgment interest.

In a False Claims Act Case that settled in 2017, Burby defended a Massachusetts vendor of medical records software, eClinicalWorks, after a whistleblower at the company alleged numerous malfunctions in the software. It was the first DOJ prosecution of false billing claims arising from a federal program enacted in 2009 that paid incentives to health care providers who adopted electronic medical records.

Burby's client settled with the DOJ for $155 million⁠—the largest-ever FCA recovery in Vermont⁠—and entered into a five-year corporate integrity agreement for the software. Burby said the government initially had demanded more than $1 billion in recoveries. He added that eClinicalWorks' software remained federally certified, allowing the company to stay in business.