John P. Mahoney

John P. Mahoney, Esq., is a Founding and Managing Partner of the Firm, which has been recognized by Best Lawyers® as a Best Law Firm in the United States for 2025 and 2026. The Firm specialize in the practice of federal sector employment, labor, and national security clearance law.  law. Attorney Mahoney is recognized by Best Lawyers® for 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, as America’s Top 50 Lawyers for 2024 and 2025; rated as a "Preeminent AV-Rated Lawyer™", a " Lawyer of Distinction™", and is registered by Martindale-AVVO® in the 2025 Bar Registry of Preeminent Lawyers™. John was selected as a "2025 Top Rated Lawyer in Labor & Employment," and a “2025 Top Rated DC Metro Lawyer in Labor & Employment Law” by The National Law Journal, Corporate Counsel Magazine, American Lawyer Magazine, and Martindale-AVVO™. He has also achieved a perfect 10.0 AVVO Rating. Since 2012, he has been selected for membership in The Million Dollar Advocates Forum, having won million-dollar case settlements and victories for federal employees. Also, he was recently selected as a Best Lawyer in America for 2026, was on the cover of the Top 100 Attorneys Magazine in 2022, and was chosen as Federal Employment Lawyer of the Year in 2020 and 2021. Furthermore, Attorney Mahoney was named “the Most Influential Employment Lawyer 2021 – Washington, DC”, and as the “Leading Employment and Labor Rights Attorney of the Year in Washington, DC for 2021.” His last Attorney performance rating was rated by his last law firm as a perfect 10 or "Outstanding" based upon each of the following Attorney performance standards: He has over 32 years of experience effectively representing the federal sector community and has served as an expert witness on federal employment law. He recently served on the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board’s (MSPB or "the Board") stakeholder working group that substantially revised the MSPB regulations at 5 C.F.R. Part 1201. As an award-winning Co-Chair of the DC Bar's Labor & Employment Law Section, John previously served on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC or "the Commission") stakeholder working group that substantially revised the EEOC's federal sector regulations at 29 C.F.R. Part 1614, as well as EEOC's Management Directive (MD)-110. Consequently, Attorney Mahoney authored the DC Bar’s "Official Public Statement Regarding the EEOC’s Proposed Federal Sector Complaint Regulations," (D.C. BAR LABOR & EMPLOYMENT LAW SECTION, Apr. 1998), as well as the National Employment Lawyers Association’s (NELA) "Official National Comments on The EEOC’s Proposed Federal Sector Regulations" (THE NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT LAWYERS ASSOCIATION (NELA), Apr. 1998), reprinted in NELA’S EMPLOYEE ADVOCATE MAGAZINE. John has represented federal employees, contractors, unions, employee associations, agencies, and/or private businesses before various federal courts such as the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, various U.S. district courts, as well as before such federal agencies as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA). In one victory before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, John successfully argued an appeal of first impression resulting in the creation of new due process rights for a class of Excepted Service Schedule A disabled federal employees and the reversal of several MSPB decisions and an OPM regulation. See VanWersch v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 197 F.3d 1144 (Fed. Cir. 1999).Attorney Mahoney was previously appointed to serve as the statutory Vice Chairman, an executive, and an administrative judge (ES-IV) of the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) Personnel Appeals Board (PAB), where he adjudicated employee disciplinary, discrimination, whistleblower reprisal, and labor law cases. He has served as General Counsel to various federal sector unions, as Senior Associate to the General Counsel of the Senior Executives Association (SEA), outside employment or national security law counsel to a number of federal agencies, private federal contractors, and/or other corporations, as well as a member of the AFL-CIO's national Lawyers Coordinating Committee.