John K. Villa
Chair, Governance Committee
John K. Villa is a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C. He specializes in the trial defense of large law firms, accounting firms and boards of directors, and has handled significant aspects of the Enron and Madoff cases ,among others. He is a longtime member of St. Albans’ Parish, Washington, D.C.
He graduated from Duke University with a degree in economics and received his J.D. with honors from the University of Michigan Law School. He is married to Ellen Edwards Villa, a former editor of the Washington Post, and has a daughter, Kate, and a son, John.
He has served, or is serving, on the boards of a number of organizations, including the Board of Visitors of the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy; the Washington chapters of Big Brothers Big Sisters; the Society for Orphaned Armenian Relief (SOAR); and the Edmund Burke School.
He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School, has taught at Columbia and Duke Law Schools, and has authored four treatises or case books for lawyers and law students. He is a frequent speaker on the professional responsibilities of lawyers and has been described by a number of publications as the leading legal malpractice defense lawyer in the nation. He is a member of the Metropolitan Club of Washington.