Alan Vinegrad, Esquire

2024 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Second Circuit

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA–Alan Vinegrad has been selected to receive the prestigious 2024 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Second Circuit. A senior counsel at Covington & Burling LLP in New York City and a member of the firm’s White Collar Defense and Trial Practice Groups, Vinegrad represents individuals, corporations, and corporate boards in complex civil litigation and criminal and regulatory enforcement matters. He received the award in late September in New York City.

“Our enthusiastic support for Mr. Vinegrad’s nomination is not just—or even primarily—because of his extraordinary achievements as a lawyer in both the public and private sectors for nearly four decades….,” writes U.S. District Judge Margo K. Brodie of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, who nominated Vinegrad for the award. “It is because of his unparalleled devotion to training and mentoring dozens, if not hundreds, of attorneys to follow his own stellar example and fulfill the highest ideals of our profession.”

Vinegrad joined Covington & Burling after years of public service. In addition to serving as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, he served as the office’s chief assistant U.S. attorney, chief and deputy chief of the criminal division, chief of civil rights litigation, and chief of general crimes. In addition to his executive and supervisory responsibilities, Vinegrad personally investigated, prosecuted, and tried many cases himself.

While at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Vinegrad created intensive training programs for new assistants, many of which were the first of their kind and still continue. Since 1996, he has taught trial advocacy as an adjunct professor at New York Law School. He has also been a guest lecturer at other law schools, including Yale, Columbia, Fordham, and Penn. In addition to mentoring, Vinegrad also strives to build community by serving as president of the Eastern District Association, which keeps current and former prosecutors of the U.S. Attorney’s Office connected. He was a board member of the Vera Institute of Justice, which seeks to end overcriminalization and mass incarceration of people of color, immigrants, and those experiencing poverty.

Vinegrad earned his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1980. In 1984, he earned his law degree cum laude from New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the New York University Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif.