As a diplomat, national security official and negotiator in the Obama era, David Pressman ping-ponged from international crisis to international crisis.

As a New York partner with Boies Schiller Flexner, a firm best known for hard-nosed U.S. litigation, his job description hasn't changed all that much.

Nearly three years after joining Boies Schiller, Pressman's docket—amid heightened U.S. tensions with both China and Russia—includes targeting Russian banks over the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane in Ukraine and fighting to bring detained U.S. citizens home from China. And those are just the cases Pressman and his firm are willing to acknowledge.