The First 100 Days: What’s Happened So Far

Danielle Conley is a Partner at Latham & Watkins and leads the firm’s Anti-Discrimination & Civil Rights practice.  

Her practice focuses on representing educational institutions, companies, and other large organizations in high-stakes government investigations and enforcement matters, sensitive internal investigations, and other matters that involve substantial reputational risk.  Danielle has extensive experience conducting internal investigations in response to reported allegations of sexual misconduct and race and gender-based discrimination, and she has led numerous internal reviews and risk assessments on racial and gender equity issues. She also routinely counsels clients on best practices for developing and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.  

Before joining Latham, Danielle served as Deputy Counsel to President Biden in the White House Counsel’s Office where she advised the President, Vice President, and other senior White House officials on a wide array of domestic policy and civil rights issues, including voting and democracy, policing and criminal justice reform, and gender equity issues including Title IX and reproductive rights. Among other high-profile efforts, she helped shepherd Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic nomination to the US Supreme Court. During the Obama administration, Danielle served as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the US Department of Justice where she advised the Deputy Attorney General on civil rights policy issues and managed some of DOJ’s most significant civil rights litigation and enforcement matters.

Kate Hudson is Deputy Vice President and Counsel for Government Relations and Public Policy at Association of American Universities (AAU). Kate assists in managing and directing the Government Relations and Public Policy department and developing and executing strategies to advance AAU’s advocacy and public policy priorities in the federal legislative and regulatory arenas. Her portfolio includes intellectual property, technology transfer, open and public access, export controls, sexual harassment, data privacy, and copyright issues. In addition, she supports AAU’s policy and federal relations work in areas that require legal expertise, such as tax issues related to research, labor and employment, research security policy, higher education Title IX issues, and other regulatory matters important to America’s leading research universities. Kate also leads AAU’s General Counsels (GC) constituent group and the CFR Tax Task Force.   

Prior to joining AAU, Kate served in the U.S. federal government as a senior attorney-advisor in the legislative and executive branches, most recently with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). At GAO, she provided legal counsel on a range of issues including interagency governance bodies, federal financial management, legislative drafting, and technical advice to Congress. Before her work at GAO, Kate served as an attorney-advisor with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), as both an administrative litigator before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and regulatory counsel. Additionally, she served as agency counsel for three years in the federal litigation surrounding the 2015 OPM cyberbreach case (In re: OPM, 928 F.3d 42 (D.C. Cir. 2019), the largest federal class action privacy lawsuit in U.S. history. Before serving at OPM, she was the inaugural director of the Executive branch CXO Fellows Program at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and as a key member of the Office of Government-wide Policy (OGP) providing programmatic support to the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer (OCIO), the Office of Federal Financial Management (OFFM), and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) at the U.S. Office of Management & Budget (OMB).   

An active volunteer, Kate is a member of the Military Spouse JD Network (MSJDN), the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia (WBA), and Women in Government Relations (WGR). She also provides pro bono legal services to District of Columbia residents through Whitman-Walker Health and the District of Columbia Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project.   

She holds a master’s degree in public administration and policy from American University; a law degree from the University of Dayton School of Law; and both a master’s and bachelor’s degree in political science from Ohio University. She is licensed to practice law in Georgia, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia.