Dan Lenerz
Special Litigation Counsel
Dan Lenerz is Special Litigation Counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. Dan joined ICAP from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, where he was Deputy Chief of the Appellate Division. During his 12 years at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Dan argued more than 65 appeals before the D.C. Circuit and the D.C. Court of Appeals. He also handled six felony jury trials and over 25 misdemeanor bench trials in D.C. Superior Court. In 2022, Dan received the U.S. Attorney’s Award for Exceptional Performance as an AUSA. From December 2022 to January 2025, Dan was the legal advisor to the January 6 prosecutions. Dan also taught Legal Rhetoric for eight years as an Adjunct Professor at American University Washington College of Law.
Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Dan was on the Appellate Staff of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division for four years. While there, he briefed and argued more than a dozen appeals in the federal courts of appeals and two state supreme courts. Dan also served as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Dan spent three years as a senior associate at Latham & Watkins LLP, where he primarily engaged in complex civil trial litigation. Earlier in his career, Dan was a criminal trial AUSA in the San Diego U.S. Attorney’s Office, and he clerked at all three levels of the federal judiciary: for the Honorable Myron H. Thompson of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, the Honorable Stephen F. Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court.
Dan is a member of the D.C. Circuit Advisory Committee on Procedures and the committee that drafts model criminal jury instructions for D.C. Superior Court (a/k/a “the Redbook”). Dan received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College and his J.D. from Stanford Law School.
