Bruce Riordan
USC Gould School of Law

Bruce Riordan is an assistant United States attorney and the special counsel to the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. In that capacity, he is the responsible for overseeing the Office’s Public Affairs and Community Outreach efforts, including its efforts in the and Consumer Protection field.

From January 2007 through August 2010, he was the chief of the Gang Division for the City Attorney of Los Angeles where he supervised the implementation and enforcement of the City 43 civil gang injunctions as well the enforcement of all criminal street gang matters in the City Attorney’s Office.

Before starting work with the City of Los Angeles in January 2007, he spent 15 years with the U.S. Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney. At the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he was a deputy chief of the Terrorism and Organized Crime Section of the Office where he directed federal gang prosecutions and lead federal task forces investigating the criminal activities of the 18th Street Gang, the MS-13 Gang, the Rolling 60s Neighborhood Crips Gang, and the Mexican Mafia. In that capacity, he charged and successfully prosecuted the first federal racketeering case against a California street gang. While at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he was cross-designated as a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney to prosecute Rolling 60s Neighborhood Crips gang members for a series of state felonies. As deputy chief of the Terrorism and Organized Crime Section, Riordan worked on and supervised matters of domestic and international terrorism and in 2004, he successfully prosecuted the nation's first federal conviction of a member of the radical domestic organization known as the Earth Liberation Front.

In 2002, Riordan was awarded the “Director’s Award” by the U.S. Department of Justice for the successful prosecution and conviction, after a three month trial, of 26 members and associates of the Mexican Mafia and the 18th Street Gang for assorted federal racketeering violations including murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, extortion, narcotics distribution, money laundering and weapons possession. In 2009, The California Lawyer Magazine named Riordan one of the “California Lawyers of the Year” for his work with the City of Los Angeles to reform the use of civil gang injunctions. He is also a lecturer at the USC Gould School of Law, where he teaches Trial Advocacy.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Bloomberg Government
June 22, 2022
Re: Franita Tolson

Franita Tolson was interviewed about how federal lawsuits from North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas test the limits of the Voting Rights Act, the boundaries of state government authority, and the ability of voting rights groups to file racial gerrymandering cases. “These doctrines and approaches in these cases fundamentally reset the rules of the game,” she said. “In 2030 we will live in a completely different world than we lived in in 2020, and 2020 was not favorable to minority voters at all.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
March, 2022

"Saltwater Sovereignty: Tribal Marine Management Authority Along the Pacific Coast.” Online Environmental Law Workshop. University of Maryland School of Law, Baltimore, MD.

Daniel Klerman
March, 2022

“Comment on Choi, Erickson, & Pritchard, ‘Coalitions among Plaintiffs’ Attorneys in Securities Class Actions’,” Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, Virtual, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Robin Craig
March, 2022

“Who’s on First? The Mind-Blowing Attempt to Conceptualize Deference in the Midst of Decision Delays and Agency Repeals,” J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium for the George Washington University School of Law, Virtual, Washington, D.C.