As Executive Managing Director, Erin Nealy Cox contributes to the management and day to day operations of Stroz Friedberg, in addition to having overall responsibility for the Dallas, Minneapolis and Chicago offices. As such, she supervises cyber-security, digital forensics, Internet investigations and electronic discovery assignments for major law firms, government agencies and corporate information technology departments involved in criminal, civil, regulatory and internal investigations. She also serves as the firm wide practice lead for the cyber security practice. As a result, she specializes in the supervision of data breach cases involving outsider and insider threats, as well as, economic espionage cases facilitated by the internet. Her experience extends to leaks of confidential information, wiping, mass deletion and other forms of spoliation, and computer-enabled theft of trade secrets and insider information. She regularly consults on the technical and strategic aspects of initiatives to protect computer networks from malware and malicious code, online fraud, and other forms of illicit Internet activity. As a result, Ms. Nealy Cox is a trusted advisor to top executives, in-house lawyers, and outside counsel.
In her time at Stroz Friedberg, Ms. Nealy Cox has led teams handling some of the firm’s biggest and most high profile data breach matters as well as large-scale and complex electronic evidence matters. In addition, Ms. Nealy Cox serves as a trusted advisor to government offices and the judiciary.
Prior to joining Stroz Friedberg, Ms. Nealy Cox was as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas for nearly ten years. While there, Ms. Nealy Cox served as the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Coordinator for four years and was appointed to a nation-wide working group responsible for coordinating and prosecuting complex cyber-crime cases across the United States. During her tenure with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ms. Nealy Cox was deployed to Main Justice in Washington, D.C., to serve as senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Policy (OLP). In less than a year, Ms. Nealy Cox was appointed Chief of Staff. In this leadership position, she directed tactical operations for the office.
Prior to her work in government, Ms. Nealy Cox was a litigation associate at Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal in Dallas and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York. Ms. Nealy Cox held judicial clerkships for The Honorable H. Barefoot Sanders, U.S. Senior District Judge for the Northern District of Texas and The Honorable Henry A. Politz, then Chief Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Ms. Nealy Cox received her B. A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and her J.D. cum laude, from Southern Methodist School of Law, where she served on the SMU Law Review Association as Articles Editor. She also received the SMU School of Law Merit Scholarship and is licensed by the bars in Texas and New York.