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Senior Counsel, U.S. Litigation Strategy

Lansdowne, VA

Make a difference with us! At Alliance Defending Freedom, we believe God has brought you here for His purpose—to stand for truth and defend the God-given right to live and speak it. Together, we protect religious freedom, free speech, the sanctity of life, marriage and family, and parental rights. Review our Statement of Faith to ensure we’re a fit for you.

Locations: Lansdowne, VA

Team Overview

As the Senior Counsel, U.S. Litigation Strategy, you are a vital part of the Global Censorship Team. This position advances ADF’s strategic objectives to combat corporate and state-sponsored censorship, domestically and globally. This role is designed for a senior litigator with deep judgment and creativity who is motivated not by running cases day-to-day, but by identifying, developing, and pressure-testing promising legal theories and designing litigation strategies that can be executed by ADF’s litigation teams, government officials, or private attorneys. The position combines high-level legal analysis, litigation ideation, and strategic collaboration with close partnership with senior leadership, ensuring that the most promising censorship-related legal opportunities are identified, refined, and deployed effectively.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Litigation Development & Ideation

  • Serve as a trusted strategic advisor to the SVP on litigation opportunities, risks, and priorities related to corporate and state-sponsored censorship.
  • Identify, develop, and refine novel and high-impact legal theories addressing censorship across constitutional, statutory, administrative, and international legal frameworks.
  • Prospect for promising cases and fact patterns that could meaningfully advance free speech and anti-censorship objectives.
  • Assess the litigation viability of potential cases, including jurisdiction, standing, remedies, timing, and strategic value.
  • Work collaboratively with internal teams to determine when litigation is the appropriate tool versus legislative, regulatory, or coalition-based approaches.

Litigation Strategy

  • Conduct complex legal research and analysis that informs strategic litigation pathways, without serving as primary trial or appellate counsel.
  • Develop litigation frameworks, case theories, and legal arguments for potential use by ADF’s litigation teams, government officials, and trusted private litigators.
  • Assist in preparing litigation concept memos and strategic briefs that can be handed off for execution.
  • Consult with litigators during early-stage case development and key inflection points, as needed, while avoiding ownership of day-to-day litigation management.
  • Coordinate with internal and external litigators to ensure litigation strategies remain aligned with broader censorship objectives.
  • Advise senior leadership on how litigation strategy interacts with policy advocacy, coalition engagement, and public narrative.

Strategic Collaboration & Integration

  • Work closely with senior leadership, integrators, and team leaders to ensure litigation concepts are strategically timed, legally sound, and institutionally executable.
  • Participate in cross-functional strategy discussions to help surface legal leverage points and anticipate downstream effects.
  • Contribute to the refinement of multi-year litigation and legal strategy plans related to global censorship.

Public Engagement & Thought Leadership

  • Contribute to thought leadership through white papers, legal analyses, and strategic publications related to censorship and free speech.
  • Support public-facing strategy and education efforts, including background briefings, expert commentary, and internal preparation for media or testimony.

Minimum Qualifications

  • J.D., active license in at least one US state bar, and capable of meeting admission requirements in relevant jurisdiction within one year
  • 10+ years of litigation experience, including constitutional, regulatory, or complex civil litigation

Pay & Benefits

At Alliance Defending Freedom, we offer a competitive compensation and benefits package to support your well-being and growth. While we do not disclose specific salary ranges, our compensation is competitive with top non-profit law firms. Our benefits include 100% covered medical and dental insurance, medical and dependent care reimbursement, paid disability, long-term care, life insurance, and a 401(k) plan with a 4% company match. We prioritize work-life balance with paid time off and 12 paid holidays each year.

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Statement of Faith

Based on our adherence to the inspired, infallible, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God in Scripture, we profess with the Christian Church throughout time and around the world the faith expressed in the Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.

Doctrinal Distinctives

Also, based on this confession, we are committed to honoring God by obeying the two Greatest Commandments, loving God and loving neighbor, and based on that commitment and derived from the inspired, infallible, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God in Scripture, we profess the following as necessary for living the gospel:

  • We believe in the spiritual unity and equality of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.
  • We believe that the Lordship of Christ requires us as disciples to seek to conform our actions, thoughts, and desires in obedience to Him.
  • We believe God creates each person with an immutable biological sex — male or female — that reflects the image and likeness of God.
  • We believe God designed marriage as a unique conjugal relationship joining one man and one woman in a single, exclusive, life-long union, and God intends sexual intimacy only to occur within that relationship.
  • We believe God endows all human life with inherent dignity, and it must be respected and protected from conception to natural death.
  • We believe that God has endowed all humans with the natural, and inalienable right of religious freedom to believe, pursue truth, and live within ordered liberty such that no civil government may justly infringe upon it.
  • We believe that God, through His Son, Jesus Christ, calls all of us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him, knowing that He promises us abundant and eternal life.
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