About Justin Gelfand

A seasoned trial attorney, Justin focuses his practice on criminal defense, white collar matters, internal investigations, tax controversy, and sophisticated civil litigation.  Justin’s clients have included elected officials, attorneys, current and former law enforcement officers, former prosecutors, doctors, large and small businesses, a university, religious leaders, and hardworking individuals from all walks of life.

Justin is at home in the courtroom and routinely tries cases to verdict. A People magazine courtroom reporter recently described Justin as having “a habit of exhaustively reiterating, underlining and dissecting facts and analysis submitted in the prosecution’s case.” But when it’s in his client’s best interest, Justin resolves cases outside of the courtroom—often with no publicity.

Justin joined the U.S. Department of Justice in 2009 through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and was assigned to the Tax Division’s Southern Criminal Enforcement Section. Based in Washington, D.C. for more than four years, Justin prosecuted a wide range of federal criminal cases throughout the country, including criminal tax, financial fraud, identity theft, offshore banking, immigration fraud, passport fraud, money laundering, international tax evasion and domestic terrorism matters. As a prosecutor, Justin first-chaired 13 federal fraud jury trials and numerous federal bench trials—winning all of them. Justin spearheaded more than 50 financial fraud grand jury investigations and represented the United States before federal courts of appeal with a 100% success rate.

Justin routinely presents continuing education to attorneys and accountants throughout the country on cutting-edge legal issues. Justin was a Faculty Member at the National Advocacy Center, the U.S. Department of Justice’s acclaimed legal academy in South Carolina, where he taught hundreds of federal prosecutors the ins and outs of criminal tax cases. He played a large role in crafting the innovative way stolen identity tax refund fraud cases are now investigated and prosecuted, and trained more than 1,000 federal agents in 15 states on investigative techniques utilized by law enforcement today. For this work, Justin received the 2013 Attorney General’s Award for Fraud Prevention, an award widely recognized as one of the Justice Department’s highest honors in the field of white collar and public corruption litigation. Justin is routinely invited to present to private practitioners at national conferences from coast to coast and in Missouri.