Jose Sanchez is a litigation partner in the Los Angeles office of Foley & Lardner LLP. His practice focuses on government enforcement actions, regulatory and internal investigations, accountants’ liability defense, and securities and other complex business litigation. Jose comes to Foley after nearly six years in the Office of General Counsel of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (Deloitte Global), where he served as lead counsel and senior managing director for the Americas. His professional experiences also include senior trial counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and partner in a multinational law firm.
As a senior in-house advisor in the largest professional services network in the world, government enforcement investigator and trial attorney, and experienced outside counsel, Jose has over 25 years of experience navigating high-stakes litigation and government investigations, crisis management, and compliance challenges. Clients turn to Jose for his substantive knowledge, strategic advice, and effective advocacy. Jose gets results because he has been on the inside and understands his clients’ business, regulatory, and legal environment as well as regulators’ processes, motivations, and expectations. He identifies and addresses issues early in an investigation or litigation while building respected relationships with clients, regulators, and adversaries alike. Jose has persuaded the government to close high-profile investigations and worked to settle enforcement charges or private litigation when appropriate. He also stands ready to defend his clients vigorously in court.
Jose counsels and defends U.S. and international accounting firms and their audit professionals as well as public companies, investment firms, and other regulated entities and their senior executives during enforcement and regulatory investigations before the SEC, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the New York State Attorney General (NYAG), state boards of accountancy, and other U.S. and foreign regulators. Jose has successfully litigated securities fraud class actions, shareholder derivative suits, professional malpractice claims, and other commercial disputes through all phases of litigation in federal, state, and administrative courts, as well as in arbitration. His experience covers a range of industries, including accounting, banking, finance, health care, technology, and manufacturing.
At Deloitte Global, Jose led and supported cross-functional and cross-border teams working on complex regulatory, enforcement, and civil litigation matters, as well as on internal investigations, technology implementation, and business reorganizations and transactions. He was a trusted advisor to senior business, risk and legal leaders, and other stakeholders of both Deloitte Global and its independent member firms throughout the world related to regulatory and legal compliance, crisis management, professional practice issues, and corporate governance. Additionally, Jose developed standard dispute resolution provisions for client contracts globally and contributed to implementing ethics and anti-corruption policies across Deloitte firms in Latin America.
Before his tenure at Deloitte, Jose spent twelve years as a litigation partner and practice group leader at a multinational law firm in Los Angeles, where he defended a wide range of clients in regulatory and enforcement investigations, white collar matters, and civil litigation involving securities and financial reporting, whistleblower allegations, insider trading, anticorruption, and professional malpractice. He also conducted independent investigations and anticorruption risk assessments across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Jose is fluent in Spanish.
Earlier in his career, Jose served as senior trial counsel in the SEC’s Enforcement Division for the Pacific Regional Office, where he led and supervised a wide range of complex and high-profile enforcement investigations and litigations involving accounting restatements, disclosure fraud, unregistered securities offerings, insider trading, broker-dealers, and investment advisers. His litigation victories include numerous preliminary injunctions and receiver appointments to stop Ponzi schemes and other offering frauds, a jury conviction in the Southern District of New York connected to the mutual fund market timing and late trading scandal, and the imposition of one of the largest fines at the time against a corporate officer following a financial fraud trial in the Central District of California.
Following law school, Jose served as federal judicial law clerk to the Honorable Richard A. Paez, then of the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and then to the Honorable Harry Pregerson of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Jose received a two-year Skadden Public Interest Law Fellowship and worked at the Employment Law Center – Legal Aid Society of San Francisco. While a litigation associate, Jose participated in the Los Angeles County Bar Trial Advocacy Program and tried cases as a Pro Bono Deputy City Attorney for the City of Anaheim.
