Dallas white collar defense attorneys Jeff Ansley and Arianna Goodman have departed Bell Nunnally for Vedder Price, the firm announced Thursday.
Goodman, who was a senior associate at Bell Nunnally, gains a promotion to shareholder with the move. She and Ansley are also joined by associate Katherine Devlin.
Ansley, who led the white collar practice at Bell Nunnally for a decade, is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas and enforcement attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the DOJ, he focused on major fraud and public corruption.
“Jeff and Arianna will be strong team leaders in our growing Dallas office, and we look forward to further strengthening the reach of our government investigations group with the addition of their team,” Junaid A. Zubairi, chair of Vedder Price’s government investigations and white collar defense group, said in a statement.
Ansley, Goodman and Devlin represent UDF Director of Asset Management Jeffrey Brandon Jester in the high-profile United Development Funding trial that concluded in January. Jester and three other UDF executives were convicted of defrauding investors and banks using funds that provided more than $1 billion in loans to developers of residential housing communities and homebuilders and face up to 27 years in federal prison. A sentencing hearing is set for May 20.
In 2019, Ansley and Goodman successfully obtained an acquittal for North Texas pharmacist Steven Kuper following a two-month trial in which federal prosecutors alleged Kuper and other defendants conspired to defraud Tricare, the U.S. military healthcare system, in a $100 million kickback scheme.
Goodman was also a leader with Bell Nunnally’s pro bono efforts. She spearheaded the firm’s involvement with the Buried Alive Project, a non-profit organization that advocates for reduced sentences for non-violent offenders sentenced under now-outdated federal drug laws.
Vedder Price, a 300-lawyer firm based in Chicago, launched its Dallas office in January 2021 by relocating Chicago shareholder William Kummerer, a member of the firm’s board of directors and former corporate practice group leader, and recruiting finance partner Aaron Turner from Frost Brown Todd. The Dallas office has nine attorneys with the Bell Nunnally additions.