Matt Orwig was in Washington, D.C., interviewing with Texas senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Phil Gramm for a federal prosecutor’s post when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The senators told Orwig to keep his potential nomination for U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas quiet until they contacted him.
With all planes grounded, Orwig started making his way home to Dallas via Greyhound.
Twenty-seven hours later, the crowded bus made a stop in Texarkana, where a passenger bought a copy of The Dallas Morning News.
“My cell phone battery had died many hours earlier, and I was talking to a doctor from the World Health Organization who was on his way to Los Angeles and another guy who was a dog trainer who kept apologizing that he smelled like dogs,” Orwig told The Texas Lawbook in an interview Friday. “Then this other guy looks up from the newspaper and says, ‘Hey, I think this is you in the newspaper.’ That’s how I learned that I had been nominated by President Bush for the job.”
Four decades later, Orwig, who spent 17 years with the U.S. Department of Justice and 20 years as a trial lawyer and white-collar criminal defense lawyer with some of the largest corporate law firms in the world, officially retires Monday.
“I’m not going to do anything for a few months — maybe work on some church projects and then teach,” he said. “But I have pledged to myself that I will never bill by the hour ever again.”
Orwig, Dallas trial lawyer Tom Melsheimer and Steve Stodghill founded the Dallas office of Winston & Strawn in January 2017 with a total of 23 lawyers. The Chicago-founded firm now has 100 lawyers in Dallas and about 60 in Houston.
“Matt gave us instant credibility in the government investigations and white-collar space,” Melsheimer said. “He is also one of those people about whom an ill word has not been spoken, so that was a tremendous asset for us as well. He is also such a trusted counselor and advisor to lawyers, judges and elected officials. And his service in East Texas, and his background growing up in Lubbock, actually gave us credibility throughout the state, not just in Dallas.”
Judge Irma Ramirez, who was recently confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, said Orwig helped her try her first case as a federal prosecutor in 1995.
“In addition to being a skilled advocate, he was a wonderful teacher, mentor, and colleague who always made time to answer my questions and to strategize about cases,” Judge Ramirez said. “Matt is a genuinely kind person who cares about everyone around him, and he is the kind of friend on whom you can always count.”
U.S. District Judge Karen Gren Scholer said Orwig’s character and legal acumen have allowed him to be “entrusted with the most elite of leadership positions.”
“As is evident by his many contributions to the legal community, Matt is a superb lawyer, mentor to others and leader,” Judge Scholer said. “Beyond that though, Matt Orwig is a man of faith, a class act and a great human being. Though I wish him well on his retirement, I seriously doubt he is done giving back to our legal community.”
Orwig became a mentor to dozens of prominent lawyers who are now in leadership roles.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that I owe most of my career to Matt,” says Charles Schwab Chief Counsel Shamoil Shipchandler. “He told me — at the time, a raw, unproven, inexperienced commercial lawyer in D.C. — that he saw me as a white-collar prosecutor. And when I came to work for him at the U.S. attorney’s office, he gave me every opportunity to learn and grow and develop into just that. He was always there for wisdom and encouragement. He’s a mentor, he’s a friend, and he continues to be an inspiration.”
Toyota North American Managing Counsel Basheer Ghorayeb, who worked with Orwig for 10 years at Jones Day and then at Winston, said Orwig’s retirement is the “end of an era.”
“I’m from Beirut and Matt is from West Texas and I thought he and I would have nothing in common, but I learned quickly that he is genuinely interested in everyone,” Ghorayeb said. “Matt has taught a generation of us how to be lawyers. He is a fierce advocate for clients without being a jerk. He has had a big impact on the Texas legal community.”
Orwig, a cancer survivor, has represented large military defense contractors and had high-level national security clearance.
“Some of my biggest successes for clients are those that can never be discussed publicly,” he said. “I have had a Forrest Gump quality to my career — I’ve found myself involved in some of the biggest cases with some amazing individuals. The complex projects I’ve gotten to work on for defense contractors, including stuff like Star Wars, where we are across the table from the federal government has been both collaborative and adversarial.”
Orwig’s father was an old-fashioned traveling clothes salesman. His mother stayed home to raise their six children.
“We lived very modestly, and I never thought I would leave Lubbock,” he said, noting that he went to college and law school at Texas Tech University. “Neither of my parents had college degrees, but they made sure that all six of us did.”
During the summer following his second year of law school, however, Orwig did a clerkship with the U.S. attorney’s office.
“That’s when I really got the bug to be a federal prosecutor,” he said.
Orwig practiced for an insurance defense firm in Lubbock for three years, where he tried a lot of cases in West Texas.
“You either win or you learn from those kind of trials, and I did a lot of both,” he said. “But I kept applying for any open positions with the U.S. attorney’s office, and I finally got hired in Dallas.”
For 17 years, Orwig served in various posts in the Northern and Eastern districts of Texas and at Main Justice in Washington, D.C., including seven years as the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District.
In May 2007, he left the U.S. attorney’s office to open the Dallas office of Sonnenschein — later known as Dentons — where he spent nearly five years. Then, he spent five years at Jones Day in Dallas before joining Melsheimer to open the Winston office.
“As U.S. attorney, I don’t think anything can top Matt’s investigative efforts arising out of the Columbia explosion and the debris field that spread throughout East Texas,” said Melsheimer, pointing to the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. “It was the largest potential crime and recovery scene in U.S. history, and he helped steer that investigation with the same kind of integrity and calm resolve that characterized his whole career.
“Outside the courtroom, his longtime service on the Federal Judicial Evaluation Committee for Texas has contributed to the selection of dozens of highly qualified judges, federal prosecutors and other federal appointments,” Melsheimer said. “Matt is a man who lives his principles, but he is not sanctimonious or arrogant about it. In fact, he is humble. That humility has allowed him to listen and learn throughout his career in a way that today, he is plainly one of the wisest people I’ve ever come to know well. That makes him a terrific role model for younger lawyers.”