Elliot Williams is a Principal in The Raben Group’s Government Affairs Practice Group. With fifteen years of experience across all three branches of government, Elliot has worked with elected and appointed officials at the highest levels, and possesses a deep understanding of the legislative and executive branches of government.

Elliot joined Raben after nearly eight years as a senior political appointee in the Obama administration. There he honed his skills in management, coalition building, implementing policy, advocating agency positions, and counseling senior leadership. He served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice, where he played significant roles in helping secure Senate confirmation for both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. He also managed a team that handled the Department’s legislative affairs activity dealing with antitrust, civil rights, criminal, environmental, immigration, and tax enforcement issues.

Prior to Justice, he spent several years as Assistant Director for Legislative Affairs at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As the head of the agency’s legislative affairs efforts, he developed significant substantive expertise in immigration policy, as well as an understanding of the operational and political elements of policy change.

Elliot previously worked as Judiciary Counsel to now-Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and started his career as a practicing attorney — first clerking for two federal judges, and then being accepted into to the Attorney General’s Honors Program, where he served as a Trial Attorney in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

Elliot’s efforts earned him recognition in 2015 as one of “D.C.’s Rising Stars” by the National Law Journal. Elliot is a frequent commentator in the media, with appearances on MSNBC, CNN, SiriusXM, and WNYC Radio, and in HuffPost, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The Hill, NBC News THINK, and CNN.com, among others. He earned a law degree and master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree cum laude in art history from the University of Pennsylvania.