Bob Seldon
Mr. Seldon is a highly regarded trial attorney whose background includes service as an Assistant United States Attorney, as the partner heading the litigation department of a corporate law firm, in two public interest organizations, and as the founder of a small plaintiff’s law firm. Mr. Seldon has been the lead counsel in upwards of fifty civil and administrative trials and hearings, and an equal number of appeals; both for plaintiffs and defendants; in individual and class actions; and in federal, state, and local courts and administrative bodies around the country. Mr. Seldon is well known by many of the District Judges and Magistrate Judges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where a number of his former colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s Office presently sit.
2003-present: Principal, Robert C. Seldon & Associates, P.C.
Mr. Seldon is the founder of the firm which bears his name, a small firm specializing in representing plaintiffs in employment discrimination suits, civil rights actions, whistleblower cases, suits involving violations of the First Amendment and federal law, False Claims Act qui tam actions, suits over failure to accommodate under the Americans with Disabilities Act and its federal counterpart, the Rehabilitation Act, and cases involving unlawful actions by the federal government.
Mr. Seldon’s successful casework includes securing a temporary restraining order for an African American federal law officer removed from senior management in retaliation for disclosing his agency’s institutional discrimination to Congress, preventing his involuntary reassignment, and securing $500,000 in monetary relief; prevailing at trial in U.S. District Court on behalf of an African American woman removed from federal law enforcement in retaliation for filing a discrimination complaint, securing her reinstatement and over $1 million in monetary relief; prevailing at trial on behalf of a highly successful African American woman removed as a top ranking official in a federal law enforcement agency after filing an EEO complaint; prevailing after appeal on behalf of a female public affairs officer replaced by an unqualified male political appointee, securing over $300,000 in monetary relief; and prevailing on behalf of the female Chair of the Commerce Department’s Operating Committee on Export Policy replaced by a less qualified male subordinate, securing $270,000.00 in monetary relief.
Mr. Seldon was the Executive Director of Project LAW, which he co-founded, a public interest law firm devoted to representing individuals whose civil rights and liberties have been invaded by powerful institutions of government and the corporate world. While at Project LAW, Mr. Seldon served as lead counsel on behalf of a nuclear engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy involuntarily reassigned in retaliation for disclosing DOE’s failure to properly document and investigate nuclear accidents and lethal occupational safety violations, among the most significant whistleblower cases heard by the federal Merit Systems Protection Board; and the former Deputy Chief of Police of D.C., who lost his position after disclosing the incompetence of the former Chief of Police to The Washington Post
1994-1998: General Counsel and Litigation Director, Government Accountability Project
The Government Accountability Project is a prominent public interest organization which promotes accountable government and safe corporate practices by representing whistleblowers. In addition to creating GAP’s litigation department, Mr. Seldon served as lead counsel on behalf of many whistleblowers, including an environmental whistleblower terminated for disclosing that DOE had spent $59 million in a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement which unlawfully underestimated the risk of exposure to radioactive, carcinogenic, and toxic substances, securing $290,000 of monetary relief.
Mr. Seldon served as the partner in charge of the litigation department of Krooth & Altman, a law firm specializing in transactional law involved in the development of multi-family housing. While there, Mr. Seldon served as lead counsel in a wide variety of litigation, ranging from lender liability to injunctive actions against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for unlawfully closing a government mortgage insurance program which threatened to bankrupt private mortgage underwriters licensed by the Federal Housing Authority.
1980-1988: Assistant United States Attorney for Washington, D.C.
Mr. Seldon served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Civil Division in D.C., where he was responsible for defending the federal government and senior federal officials in litigation challenging controversial programs of administrative agencies and at trials involving claims of discrimination and retaliation in federal employment. In 1985, Mr. Seldon was designated Senior Litigation Counsel and given responsibility for overseeing the defense of class actions.
Mr. Seldon served with the Office of Consumer Protection when the Civil Aeronautics Board was de-regulating the air transport industry. He served as the lead counsel in successfully opposing one the original Continental-Western merger and the attempt to close Dallas Love Field, which would have threatened the existence of Southwest Airlines.
1976-1977: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Georgetown University Law Center Project on Property Rights.
Mr. Seldon is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; the D.C. Circuit; the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; the Federal Circuit; the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland; the U.S. Supreme Court; and, on a pro hac vice basis, numerous federal courts around the country.
1976: J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
1973: A.B., Washington University
Mr. Seldon participated as one of the pilot mediators in the Alternative Dispute Resolution program established by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 1980. Since that time, Mr. Seldon has represented clients in approximately 50 mediations, many of which were resolved successfully.
Since 2003, Mr. Seldon has been an active member of the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association.
Attorneys-At-Law
1319 F Street, N.W., Suite 200 Washington, DC 20004
