Meet the Acting Assistant Attorney General

Sharis Pozen was appointed Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division in August 2011.

Ms. Pozen joined the United States Department of Justice on February 16, 2009, as Chief of Staff and Counsel, and served as a key deputy to Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney. In these positions, Pozen played a leading role on several enforcement and competition matters, including in the healthcare, technology, energy, and agriculture industries.

Immediately prior to joining the Department, Ms. Pozen was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Hogan & Hartson LLP, where she served as a Director of the firm’s Antitrust Practice Group. In that capacity, Ms. Pozen’s practice focused on trade regulation and antitrust issues across a broad spectrum of national and multinational industries—including technology, healthcare, and life sciences—utilizing her expertise in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, the Robinson-Patman Act, distribution issues, and the Federal Trade Commission Act.

Prior to joining Hogan & Hartson in 1995, Ms. Pozen held several positions at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), where she began her professional career in 1989 as a staff attorney in the FTC’s Merger Litigation Division, followed by Assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Competition, Attorney Advisor to FTC Commissioner Dennis A. Yao, and finally, Attorney Advisor to FTC Commissioner Christine Varney.

As the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, Ms. Pozen provides leadership and oversight of all of the Division’s programs and policies and her responsibilities include the Division’s merger review, criminal and nonmerger civil enforcement, competition advocacy, and international coordination programs. Ms. Pozen manages an annual budget of over $160 million and staff of over 800, including more than 360 attorneys, 55 economists, and 180 paralegals—located in Washington D.C., and the Division’s field offices in Atlanta, Cleveland, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Ms. Pozen received her Juris Doctor from Washington University Law School in St. Louis in 1989 and her Bachelor of Arts from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut in 1986.