Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP is pleased to announce Daniel L. Geyser has joined the firm as an of counsel in the Dallas office, after serving for the past four years in the Office of the Solicitor General of Texas.  Geyser will continue to focus his practice on complex appellate matters and cutting-edge issues arising in constitutional and business litigation.

The move reunites Geyser with James C. Ho, the State’s former Solicitor General, who returned to Gibson Dunn in December 2010.

As an Assistant Solicitor General, Geyser conducted and supervised appellate litigation for the State of Texas.  He was routinely tasked with the toughest and highest profile assignments.  Geyser joins the firm after having just argued Severance v. Patterson before the Texas Supreme Court – a constitutional attack on the public’s historic access to open beaches; he earlier won a rare motion to rehear the case.  The same week, Geyser also won a major case in the U.S. Supreme Court, Sossamon v. Texas, involving Congress’s spending power and state sovereignty; Geyser drafted the State’s briefs and devised its core legal theories and strategy.

Geyser also was the principal writer of the State’s invitation brief in Rhine v. Deaton, a case marking the very first time the U.S. Supreme Court called for a state solicitor general to file a brief expressing the views of a State.  He received consecutive Best Brief Awards from the National Association of Attorneys General for U.S. Supreme Court briefs authored in the 2007 and 2008 Terms.

Over the course of his career, Geyser has served as lead appellate counsel in over 20 cases, in a variety of federal and state courts, in matters covering a broad swath of constitutional and statutory issues.  He has argued six times in the Texas Supreme Court (including four arguments in a single Term); multiple times each in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth and Ninth Circuits; and three times in intermediate state appellate courts.  His career win-loss record in argued cases is 9-2-2 (with two cases still pending under submission).

Prior to his tenure at the Office of the Solicitor General of Texas, Geyser practiced at a prominent appellate boutique in Washington, D.C., and at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in Los Angeles.  He received the State Bar of California’s Wiley W. Manuel Award for Pro Bono Legal Services and was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Pro Bono Panel.  Geyser served as a law clerk for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, after he graduated with honors from Harvard Law School in 2002.  He was the Notes Chair of the Harvard Law Review, an oralist on the championship team in the Ames Moot Court Competition, and a recipient of the best-brief award at each stage of that competition.  During law school, he also worked under Professor Laurence H. Tribe, analyzing issues for his legal writing and appellate practice.