King & Spalding announced Wednesday that it has recruited Sean Royall to join the firm as its global head of antitrust and consumer protection.
It is the fourth elite firm in four years for Royall, who most recently was co-head of Sidley’s antitrust and consumer protection practice. Before Sidley he was at Kirkland & Ellis and Gibson Dunn, where he practiced for 16 years and chaired the firm’s antitrust group.
Royall will work out of King & Spalding’s Houston, Washington, D.C. and Brussels offices. His career, which includes a stint as the deputy director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, has included work on many major mergers and acquisitions, appeals in courts around the country and government investigations before the FTC, Department of Justice, state attorneys general and foreign competition authorities.
Royall was part of the team that represented AT&T in its successful 2018 trial against the U.S. Justice Department over the $86 billion Time Warner merger. He also represented Facebook in its 2019 privacy-related investigation by the FTC.
More recently, Royall has represented the pharmaceutical company Allergan and the e-cigarette maker JUUL Labs in antitrust litigation. He was also on the Sidley team representing the wholesale marketplace Tundra in its antitrust lawsuit filed in May against Faire Wholesale.
“King & Spalding is committed to continue building a world-class antitrust and consumer protection practice and has the platform and resources to do it,” Royall said in a statement. “I am excited to be taking on a leading role in driving this growth and thrilled to be joining the firm, where I look forward to reuniting with many friends and former colleagues whom I respect tremendously.”