Thomas Durkin

Mr. Durkin graduated from Chicago’s Leo High School in 1964 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1968. In 1973, he received the degree of Juris Doctor from the University of San Francisco School of law. In his last year of law school, Mr. Durkin was the student advisor to the U.S.F. Criminal Law Clinic at the Marin County, California Public Defender’s Office. Mr. Durkin served as a law clerk to the Honorable James B. Parsons of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois from August, 1973, to July, 1974. From August, 1974, to April, 1978, Mr. Durkin was in private practice in Chicago specializing in federal criminal cases, and tried a large number of jury cases as a panel attorney for the Federal Defender Program of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. From April, 1978, to March, 1984, Mr. Durkin served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois under United States Attorneys Thomas P. Sullivan and Dan K. Webb. In his six years at the U.S. Attorneys Office, four and one-half years were spent in the Special Prosecutions Division, the section primarily responsible for the investigation and prosecution of the major white collar fraud and political corruption cases. Mr. Durkin investigated and prosecuted several of the cases involving systemic corruption in the Electrical Inspection Department of the City of Chicago, as well as two major Medicaid fraud cases and a variety of income tax evasion matters involving political corruption. He was also responsible for the investigation and prosecution of the first federal criminal civil rights open housing case in the Chicago area, which involved a racially motivated bombing in Burnham, Illinois. Mr. Durkin is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He also teaches National Security Law, and is the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where he serves as Co-Founder and Co-Director of its National Security and Civil Rights Program. Mr. Durkin is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Fordham Law School Center on National Security in New York City. Mr. Durkin has been on the faculties and taught Trial Advocacy for a number of years at: The John Marshall Law School; Loyola University; The National Institute of Trial Advocacy; and the U.S. Department of Justice Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute. In 2008, he served as a guest lecturer at the Duke University School of Law and the Duke Law Guantanamo Defense Clinic. In 2009, he was a guest lecturer on Guantanamo Bay and National Security Law at the University of Notre Dame and The John Marshall Law Schools. In February 2010, Mr. Durkin was a guest lecturer at the Duke University School of Law Counterterrorism Law and Policy Seminar, and the University of Chicago Law School’s International Law Society. In 2011, Mr. Durkin lectured at the University of Notre Dame’s National Security Project and presented a paper entitled: A View From Guantanamo to the Homeland: Counterterrorism War Rhetoric and the Conflation of the War on Drugs With the War on Terror. In 2011, Mr. Durkin was a panelist at the Notre Dame Law School’s Third International Law Symposium titled Terrorism After Bin-Laden. His paper, Apocalyptic War Rhetoric: Drugs, Narco-Terrorism, and a Federal Court Nightmare From Here to Guantanamo, was published in the Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law; Vol II, Issue II, Spring 2012.