Thomas Brown

Managing Director

New York

Thomas Brown is a managing director and global leader of BRG’s Cyber Security and Investigations practice.

He also co-leads BRG’s Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets practice. Mr. Brown specializes in helping clients manage cyber risk, investigate cyber incidents and crypto-related matters, remediate vulnerabilities, and comply with cyber security, data privacy, and cryptocurrency standards and regulations. As a veteran federal prosecutor and trial lawyer with deep experience in cyber and crypto matters, Mr. Brown synthesizes and presents investigative results clearly to critical audiences, including boards of directors and regulators.

From 2002 to 2014, Mr. Brown served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he supervised the Complex Frauds and Cyber Crime Unit.

As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Brown supervised and led a range of complex, cross-border cyber and cryptocurrency investigations and prosecutions, including cases against the owner of Silk Road, a $1.2 billion underground drug website, which resulted in the seizure of 173,000 bitcoin; a United States exchanger for WebMoney, the Russian-based digital currency; and the operators of Liberty Reserve, a Latin American-based convertible virtual currency.

Mr. Brown also led investigations and prosecutions of a variety of white-collar offenses, including economic espionage and theft of trade secrets, money laundering, FCPA violations, securities fraud, bankruptcy fraud, identity theft, criminal copyright theft, and tax fraud, among other violations. In addition, Mr. Brown developed an innovative strategy to combat online copyright piracy, pioneering an international intellectual property rights enforcement program still employed by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

Besides conducting multiple jury trials and arguing a number of appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Mr. Brown also won favorable judicial opinions with national impact on cyber-related issues, including an electronic surveillance matter and a case of first impression concerning the compelled production of data stored overseas by Internet service providers that led to passage of the CLOUD Act.

Mr. Brown is a recipient of the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Cyber Investigation and was named “Prosecutor of the Year” by the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation.

Mr. Brown frequently lectures on cyber security, crypto, and data privacy issues to legal, business, and law enforcement groups.