David Donovan

  • Chair-Elect

Bio

McLean, VA
’80 Journalism and Mass Communication and Political Science
Retired; Former Partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP

David was partner in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where he practiced for more than 25 years as a litigator. David joined the firm in 1985 and left In 2005 to serve for six years as general counsel of the Washington Redskins NFL franchise, during which he also served for three years as its chief operating officer, as well as general counsel of the team’s affiliated radio broadcasting company and as president of the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation. He returned to the firm in 2011 and retired at the end of 2018.

He graduated with honors, Phi Beta Kappa, from Iowa State University in 1980, after which he worked as an editor for the St. Petersburg Times and then the Sarasota Journal in Florida. He graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1984, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Georgetown University Law Journal. He joined WilmerHale in 1985 after clerking with the Honorable Thomas A. Flannery on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

In 2008 he received the ISU Department of Political Science Alumni Achievement Award. He lives in McLean, Virginia with his wife, who also is an 1980 ISU graduate. He has three children.