Christopher Michael De Bono, Esq., serves as Senior Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, where he leads Department-wide efforts to develop and implement the Department’s policy objectives and advises Department leadership on policies, legislation, and regulations involving drugs, firearms, violent crime, and digital assets. Before assuming this role, he served as a senior attorney with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Office of Chief Counsel, where he advised leadership on drug trafficking enforcement issues, including criminal discovery and disclosure obligations, the use of force, and dark web marketplace investigative techniques. Mr. De Bono also defended the DEA in all stages of litigation before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and federal trial and appellate courts.

Before entering government service, Mr. De Bono was an associate at Ropes & Gray LLP, where he specialized in white-collar criminal defense and maintained an active pro bono practice, and at Pepper Hamilton LLP (now Troutman Pepper Locke), where he specialized in complex civil litigation.

Mr. De Bono received his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, magna cum laude, from Hofstra University and his Juris Doctor, magna cum laude and Order of the Coif, from The George Washington University Law School. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Jose L. Linares on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.