Robert C. O'Brien (attorney)
Robert C. O'Brien is a prominent US lawyer who has worked privately and with the US government.
Biography
Born in Los Angeles, California, O'Brien attended Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, California. He received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, and his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a Rotary Scholar at the University of the Free State in South Africa and he speaks fluent Afrikaans.
Professional Career
O'Brien was nominated[1] by President George W. Bush on November 10, 2005 and confirmed by the US Senate as the US Alternate Representative to the 60th session of the United Nations General Assembly, which met in New York 2005-2006. In addition to his other duties as a US delegate, he addressed the General Assembly on the question of Palestine and represented the United States in the General Assembly's Sixth Committee, which considered the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.
O'Brien served as Co-Chairman of the United States Department of State's Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan,[2] launched in December 2007 by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. On [3] July 31, 2008, President George W. Bush announced his intention to appoint O'Brien to serve in his administration as a member of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee and represent the interests of the general public, for the remainder of a three-year term expiring April 25, 2011.[4]
O'Brien is the partner-in-charge of the Los Angeles office of Arent Fox LLP, a national law firm. He has represented Dr. Buzz Aldrin in a number of high-profile cases and was the federal court-appointed Discovery Master in the MGA v. Mattel (“Barbie v. Bratz”) case.
In October 2011, Robert was named to Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy and National Security Advisory Team as Co-Chair of the International Organizations Work Group.[5]
From 1996 to 1998, O'Brien was a legal officer with the United Nations Security Council (Compensation Commission) in Geneva, Switzerland, where he led a multinational team of attorneys, loss adjusters and accountants in the government claims (F) section and was responsible for the United Nations Secretariat's review and processing of billions of dollars in claims resulting from Iraq's 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait. He also served as a major in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the US Army Reserve.