Dina Mishra has extensive experience handling complex, high-profile appeals in a variety of roles.
Before joining CALG, she served as a senior appellate attorney for the federal government, an appellate practitioner with one of Washington D.C.’s leading large litigation firms, and a judicial law clerk for two Supreme Court justices. These experiences have given Dina the ability to craft appeals, arguments, and appellate litigation strategies in ways that other appellate specialists miss.
While working for the federal government, she won significant regulatory and securities appeals, and was involved in many other sensitive appellate and Supreme Court matters.
Dina’s federal work, which traversed five presidential administrations, involved substantial appellate and Supreme Court litigation for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. She made important contributions to litigation about Chevron and other administrative-law doctrines, including the Supreme Court’s important Loper Bright case on agency deference. She also handled high-profile securities appeals, including appeals involving fraud, insider trading, whistleblowers, FINRA, and securities exchanges. She contributed extensively to the DOJ’s handling of appeals in cases challenging the Affordable Care Act, which culminated in the Supreme Court’s NFIB v. Sebelius decision. She also briefed or orally argued, often as lead counsel, appeals involving healthcare, energy, natural resources, and Native American tribes. In addition, she provided high-level agency counseling, including through the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel and the U.S. Office of Management & Budget, and she handled legislative affairs for the SEC.
Dina also has represented business clients in the private sector in high-stakes appeals.
As an appellate litigator for a large national law firm, she handled appeals for businesses across various industries. Her economics background has assisted her not only in developing successful strategies to litigate financial matters, but also in handling complex securities, antitrust, intellectual property, technology, insurance, energy, healthcare, and tax appeals. She also won favorable rulings in patent appellate litigation, drafting the prevailing portions of Federal Circuit briefs on novel patent-law issues worth tens of millions of dollars. And she has contributed to appeals involving bankruptcy, consumer, and commercial law.
She clerked for three federal judges, including two Supreme Court Justices, each of whom had a different jurisprudential perspective.
Dina clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court for both Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and Justice John Paul Stevens. Before that, she clerked for Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Each of the jurists for whom Dina clerked had his own distinct approach to reasoning through legal problems and that variation allowed her to learn from and appreciate the strengths of each approach.
Dina has had significant impact through her pro bono work.
She co-drafted an influential amicus brief joined by prominent officials, including a sitting U.S. Senator, and prepared prevailing petitioners’ counsel for Supreme Court oral argument in Obergefell v. Hodges on state same-sex marriage restrictions. Her work earned acknowledgment in a book about that seminal decision. She also has prevailed in multiple court-appointed appeals, including in the Ninth and D.C. Circuits. She has participated in other pro bono activities as well, including in support of U.S. military veterans.
She contributes to various professional associations, and her published work has received substantial attention.
Dina is a Barrister in the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court and has spoken on appellate and Supreme Court topics on panels coordinated by several organizations, including the Practising Law Institute. She has assisted oral argument preparations through Georgetown Law’s Supreme Court Institute and provided service to several professional organizations, including the South Asian Bar Association of Washington D.C. Her publications have been cited by federal and state courts, the Congressional Research Service, and the United States Solicitor General’s Office, among other prominent institutions.
Dina graduated from Yale Law School, where she was an Executive Editor of The Yale Law Journal.
She also served as an Articles Editor for the Yale Law & Policy Review and a Lead Editor for the Yale Journal on Regulation. She received her undergraduate degree, summa cum laude in Economics, from Harvard University, graduating near the top of her class.
Clerkships
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
- U.S. Supreme Court
Justice John Paul Stevens (ret.)
- U.S. Supreme Court
Judge Michael Boudin
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Law School
Yale Law School
Awards
John Marshall Award U.S. Department of Justice
40 Under 40 Bloomberg Law
Rising Star National Law Journal
Rising Star South Asian Bar Associations of North America and Washington D.C.
Bar Admissions
District of Columbia
Massachusetts
U.S. Court of Appeals First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, D.C., and Federal Circuits
U.S. Supreme Court
U.S. Supreme Court & U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Relentless, Inc. v. U.S. Dep't of Commerce
In an appeal involving the scope of agency regulatory power, successfully briefed and argued in the First Circuit and played a significant role in the later Supreme Court proceedings.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Young v. Securities & Exchange Commission
Defeated a petition for review filed by the chief compliance officer of the main U.S. marketer for Allen Stanford’s multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Promega Corp. v. Life Technologies, Inc.
Drafted prevailing portions of appellate briefs on novel patent-law issues and persuaded the court to issue rulings favorable to the client with respect to a $52 million judgment on appeal.
U.S. Supreme Court
Obergefell v. Hodges
Co-drafted a brief on behalf of prominent officials, including a sitting U.S. Senator, as amici curiae in support of challenges to state same-sex marriage prohibitions, and assisted in preparing prevailing counsel for oral argument.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Sault Saint Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians v. Haaland
As lead counsel, persuaded the court that a statute was properly applied to preclude a Native American tribe’s request, opposed by other tribes, for a parcel of land to be taken into trust for operation of a casino.
