Senior National Security Attorney
Larysa Simms is an award-winning senior national security attorney with 17+ years of federal service at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which she entered through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, where she independently built and carried two concurrent expert legal practices. As the sole ATF Arms Export Control Act (AECA) attorney, she provided authoritative legal guidance on ATF import control authorities. In doing so, she also developed working knowledge of the export control regimes administered by the Departments of State and Commerce, operating at the evolving nexus between ATF import controls and U.S. export controls within one interlocking defense trade control system — and protecting ATF’s jurisdiction and legal authorities across that intersection. This work spanned the interagency, including the Departments of Justice, State, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, and Treasury, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and included more than a decade of high-tempo work on Export Control Reform (ECR) — the U.S. government’s multi-year initiative to modernize Cold War-era export control systems — and multiple Russian sanctions programs.
Concurrently, she served as ATF’s sole legal adviser to U.S. delegations in more than ten international bodies and multilateral arms forums, including the Arms Trade Treaty and the United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. In that role, she analyzed and provided legal guidance on the text, scope, obligations, domestic enforceability, consistency with U.S. law, and implementation requirements of provisions in resolutions, treaties, bilateral and multilateral agreements, and political commitments — advising on what U.S. law permitted, required, and prohibited in the context of international outcomes, and providing proposed text to resolve legal conflicts and further U.S. equities.
Larysa received consistently outstanding performance evaluations throughout her tenure, and her work was recognized with the 2022 ATF Office of Chief Counsel Gavel Award — among the office’s highest honors — for resolving a complex, high-profile national security matter, along with a 2019 Special Act Award for international work and a 2017 nomination for the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award. The ATF Assistant Director and the agency’s Chief of Staff called her an “oracle” and a “folk hero,” reflecting the high-stakes nature of her work and her ability to find answers to complex legal questions. She holds a current TS/SCI clearance and a J.D.
She is now seeking a role as in-house counsel, an advisor, a consultant, or an analyst — bringing proven judgment, cross-agency and multilateral experience, statutory and regulatory expertise, and a demonstrated ability to build and carry demanding practices independently when required, all built on her national security background.
DC Law Collective
Washington, District of Columbia
• Provide legal counsel on federal employment law litigation, including statutory and regulatory analysis and support for proceedings before the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau (ATF), Office of Chief Counsel
District of Columbia
Attorney General’s Honors Program (2008)
Arms Export Control Act Practice Area (Sole Attorney)
• Served as the sole ATF AECA attorney, providing legal guidance and counseling to agency colleagues responsible for compliance and related industry-facing functions, agency leadership, and interagency partners on ATF import control authorities and U.S. Munitions Import List (USMIL) defense articles — serving as the authoritative legal resource on complex legal questions and coordinating work across complex ATF and interagency matters.
• Developed working knowledge of ITAR, EAR, and OFAC sanctions frameworks through interagency engagement — including more than a decade of high-tempo Export Control Reform initiative work extending to National Security Council (NSC) Interagency Policy Committee meetings, multiple Russian sanctions programs, and the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaties with the United Kingdom and Australia — identifying how those regimes intersected with ATF and developing legal positions to protect ATF jurisdiction and legal authorities in national security matters.
• Drafted, reviewed, and revised federal rulemakings implementing ATF AECA authorities; reviewed and consulted on ITAR and EAR rulemakings based on legal analysis of their intersection with ATF’s statutory authorities to ensure those authorities were preserved — providing regulatory perspective on how these frameworks operate, where national security priorities exist, and what compliance concerns look like from the agency side.
• Consulted on investigations and litigation across criminal, civil, and administrative matters involving ATF AECA authorities, advising ATF attorneys and agents, DOJ attorneys including National Security Division personnel and Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and Department of State attorneys — providing legal analysis that assessed risk and proposed solutions for decision-makers.
• Over time, came to serve as the primary ATF AECA interagency point of contact for the Departments of Justice, State, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, the Treasury, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative — providing authoritative legal guidance across organizational lines — earned through expertise rather than hierarchical authority — on questions that informed U.S. defense trade controls.
• Developed, maintained, and delivered briefings and training on complex legal matters to ATF personnel and interagency colleagues, translating technically difficult subject matter into clear, actionable guidance for non-specialist audiences across agencies and seniority levels; supervised ATF legal interns, providing mentorship and professional development.
International Arms Agreements, Treaties & Related Instruments Practice Area (Sole Attorney)
• Concurrently built and administered an additional expert legal practice from scratch, serving as ATF technical legal adviser to U.S. delegations in more than ten international bodies and multilateral arms forums — providing advance and real-time legal analysis and redlines to ensure international outcomes were consistent with and did not undermine U.S. law.
• Analyzed and provided legal guidance on the text, scope, obligations, domestic enforceability, consistency with U.S. law, and implementation requirements of provisions in resolutions, treaties, bilateral and multilateral agreements, and political commitments — advising on what U.S. law permitted, required, and prohibited in the context of international outcomes and providing proposed text to U.S. delegations to resolve legal conflicts.
• Represented ATF for U.S. delegations in international forums including the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and United Nations Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (UNPoA), among others.
• Designated by the ATF Chief of Staff as ATF point of contact to the Department of Justice for all international and UN matters.
• Negotiated and revised ATF international eTrace MOUs with Department of State attorneys, balancing competing institutional equities in template language and facilitating MOU execution through the DOJ Office of International Affairs and the Department of State.