Carlos Felipe Uriarte, former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs at the Department of Justice (DOJ), is co-chair of Morrison Foerster’s Congressional Investigations practice.

Carlos draws on his extensive experience conducting and defending against congressional investigations, working at the highest levels of the DOJ and in Congress, and serving in senior in-house compliance and regulatory roles to represent clients facing complex and high-stakes government investigations and enforcement actions.

Following his nomination by the president and unanimous confirmation by the Senate, Carlos served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs from 2022 to 2025, leading a team of approximately 50 legal professionals responsible for all aspects of the DOJ’s critical and high-stakes relationship with Congress. A member of the Attorney General’s senior leadership team, Carlos set legislative strategy for the Department, regularly advised DOJ leadership on complex legal and policy objectives, and orchestrated the Department’s responses to the highest profile oversight and investigative requests from Congress. In this role, Carlos testified before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, met regularly with lawmakers on the Intelligence, Financial Services, Banking, and Commerce committees on both sides of the Capitol, and negotiated high-stakes matters directly with congressional leadership.

Carlos has played a pivotal role in many of the highest-profile congressional inquiries over the past two decades. His career in Congress included serving as Chief Counsel for Investigations on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, as Counsel on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and as judiciary and oversight counsel to Representative Judy Chu. Additionally, Carlos held significant roles in the executive branch, where he served as Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General at the DOJ, and as Senior Counsel in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior. During law school, Carlos was a law clerk to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter.

Additionally, Carlos has senior in-house experience building and leading internal compliance functions and engaging with government regulators. Before rejoining the DOJ in 2022, Carlos served as a senior compliance executive at a Fortune 100 financial institution and led the legal regulatory team at an innovative and venture-backed healthcare technology startup.

Carlos clerked for the Honorable Juan R. Sánchez of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He earned his B.A. magna cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis and his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was a James Wilson Fellow in Law and Technology.