Brent Snyder

Experience

Brent Snyder is an antitrust partner in the San Francisco office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he leads the firm's regulatory and compliance department. With more than 25 years of civil and criminal litigation and trial experience in both the private and public sectors, Brent is a leading U.S. and internationally recognized antitrust and competition attorney with deep expertise in antitrust cartels and related criminal violations.

Prior to joining the firm, Brent served as chief executive officer of the Hong Kong Competition Commission (HKCC), Hong Kong’s competition enforcement agency, where he had day-to-day responsibility for all aspects of its enforcement, policy, advocacy, and administration functions. During his tenure, which involved overseeing a budget of approximately $15 million, the HKCC set several important litigation precedents; significantly increased the volume, variety, and complexity of its enforcement work; improved its leniency and cooperation incentives; and enhanced its competition policy and advocacy work.

Previously, Brent was the U.S. Department of Justice’s highest-ranking criminal antitrust enforcement lawyer, serving as the Antitrust Division’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Criminal Enforcement (DAAG) from 2013 to 2017. In this role, he oversaw all U.S. criminal antitrust investigations and prosecutions, as well as criminal policy matters, and was involved in the formulation of numerous Antitrust Division and DOJ policies and policy statements that remain in effect today, including the Memorandum on Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing (the so-called “Yates Memo”). His work also included investigations of non-antitrust criminal violations, such as fraud, obstruction of justice, and false statements. In addition, he served as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust during the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations.

Before becoming DAAG, Brent was a Trial Attorney in the Antitrust Division’s National Criminal Enforcement Section and then its San Francisco office from 2003 to 2013, where he investigated and prosecuted Sherman Act cases and related criminal violations, including grand jury investigations, indictments, litigation, and jury trials.

Previously, Brent was a commercial litigation partner in the Seattle office of Perkins Coie. He was also a litigation associate in Paul Hastings’ Los Angeles office. While in private practice, Brent represented clients in a range of cases, including antitrust, entertainment, employment, contract, and intellectual property law matters, for clients in the banking, automobile manufacturing, telecommunications, technology, and international trading industries, among others. His representations included serving as first- and second-chair trial and arbitration counsel. Brent began his legal career as a clerk for the Honorable Alan C. Kay, Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court of the District of Hawaii.