Ismail Ramsey
Founding Partner


Education

Harvard Law School, J.D. 1996
cum laude
Editor, Harvard Law Review

University of California at Berkeley
Walter A. Haas School of Business, M.B.A. 1996

Harvard College, A.B. 1989

Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards
United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, 1996-97

United States Attorney's Office, Northern District of California
Assistant United States Attorney, 1999 -2003

Keker & Van Nest LLP, San Francisco, CA
Associate, 1997-1999, 2003-2005

Edward J. McFetridge American Inn of Court
Criminal Justice Act Panel, Northern District of California

Lead counsel in numerous cases before federal and state courts and grand juries.

Through his years in both public and private practice, Mr. Ramsey has handled criminal and administrative cases covering a broad range of legal issues -- including securities fraud, accounting fraud, government program fraud, trade secret theft, trademark and copyright infringement, computer hacking, counterfeit, bank fraud, ‘prime bank’ schemes, civil rights violations, mail and wire fraud, and environmental matters.

Before co-founding the law firm of Ramsey & Ehrlich, Mr. Ramsey served for four years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, where he was a founding member of the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Unit and a member of the White Collar Crime Section. Mr. Ramsey was also a member of the General Crimes Section for his first year in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, prosecuting small fraud, bank robbery, drug, gun, and immigration offenses.

While serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Ramsey tried and secured the conviction of two leaders of a Northern California Indian tribe for embezzlement of tribal funds and casino proceeds. In another significant jury trial, Mr. Ramsey secured the conviction of an individual for perpetrating a $12 million fraud scheme largely on elderly victims. He also successfully prosecuted various computer crimes – including one individual who hacked into the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the leader of the nation’s first computer game piracy ring, who defrauded Cisco Systems of hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware and who committed copyright infringement involving a loss of over $2.5 million.

In addition to working at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Ramsey practiced for four years at Keker & Van Nest, in San Francisco, litigating both civil and criminal cases. While there, he defended the President of major public corporation in an accounting fraud investigation conducted by the Department of Justice, which resulted in no charges being filed. He defended a general counsel of a major public Silicon Valley corporation charged with securities violations by the SEC, resulting in no fine or penalty by the authorities, and no admission of wrongdoing. He also represented a major Cambodian bank in a five million dollar criminal forfeiture action for money laundering brought by the Department of Justice, which ended in the government returning all seized funds to the bank.

Mr. Ramsey received his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from Harvard College and also holds a Masters of Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. After law school, Mr. Ramsey was a law clerk for then-Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Before law school, Mr. Ramsey served as an officer in the United States Air Force and was honorably discharged as a First Lieutenant.

Mr. Ramsey is admitted to practice law in California. He has been admitted to practice in numerous federal District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeal throughout the country.