Barry Pollack

Some Lesser Known Facts About Barry Pollack

• Barry Pollack is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers group and the American Board of Criminal Lawyers group.

• He has served as the president of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers.

• After completing his formal education, Barry Pollack worked as a clerk for the Honourable Thomas A. Flannery at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

• He has served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender for Maryland, United States.

• Barry Pollack has worked as a partner at a law firm named Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin LLP in Washington, D.C. The firm accepts white collar criminal defence cases.

• He practices law in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and New York.

• Barry Pollack is a popular trial lawyer and a partner at the law firm Harris, St. Laurent & Wechsler LLP in New York and Washington, D.C.

• In his criminal law work, he often represents cases related to financial crimes, business crimes, public corruption, and national security issues.

• Barry Pollack often represents cases related to antitrust violations, fraud in government contracts, and fraud in securities, taxes, health care, or banking.

• As a former certified public accountant (CPA), he handled complex financial matters in both criminal and civil cases.

• In civil law, Barry Pollack represents complex business disputes, False Claims Act cases involving government contracts and healthcare, First Amendment issues, RICO charges, professional negligence, breach of duty, and suspension or debarment actions.

• He is a board member of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Rising for Justice.

• Barry Pollack has served as the president of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project.

• He works as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Centre in Washington, D.C., United States, where he teaches a course called ‘Anatomy of a Federal Criminal Trial.’

• In 1998, Barry Pollack defended Martin Tankleff, a man from Long Island, New York. Tankleff had spent 17 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of killing his parents when he was a teenager.

• The court overturned his conviction and dropped all charges. Later, Pollack helped Tankleff win $13.4 million in a civil lawsuit for compensation.

• Barry Pollack then won not-guilty verdicts in a criminal jury trial for his client and a well-known Washington D.C. lawyer who was charged with sexual assault.

• In 2006, he won a full not-guilty verdict for former Enron accountant Michael Krautz after two jury trials in Houston, Texas. Krautz faced criminal fraud charges after the collapse of Enron. This was one of only two cases with full acquittals out of many prosecutions.

• In another case, Barry Pollack got the court to drop a case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  

• After that, he made a plea deal in a court that led to probation for a medical oncologist, who faced charges for breaking antitrust laws. This verdict came after a federal jury trial in Fort Myers, Florida, ended in a mistrial.

• Barry Pollack then represented a federal bribery trial case after the jury found his client guilty in Sherman, Texas. He convinced the court to overturn the guilty verdicts and order a new trial. He fought the government’s appeal in the Fifth Circuit Court.

• In another case, he and his partner, Addy Schmitt, defended the co-founder of a government contracting firm in a federal bribery trial case in Alexandria, Virginia. His client was accused of paying bribes to get the defence contracts. During the trials, the federal jury announced full not-guilty verdicts on all bribery charges.

• Barry Pollack took over on appeal after his client lost a federal jury trial in Tucson, Arizona. The client faced charges of conspiracy and embezzlement from an insurance company to benefit a U.S. congressman. In earlier trials, the jury convicted the client in every aspect, but when Pollack fought the case in the Ninth Circuit Court, the court fully reversed the conviction and released his client.

• He once helped a man who was wrongfully convicted of homicide in Baltimore, Maryland. The client served 25 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. The man spent 25 years in jail for murder. Pollack fought for him and won a “writ of actual innocence.” The court declared him fully innocent and granted $2.4 million in compensation.

• Barry Pollack once won the reversal of a homicide conviction and released a New York City man from prison. The man was wrongfully imprisoned for eighteen years.

• In 2024, he represented his long-time client Julian Assange and released him from prison. Assange runs WikiLeaks and was charged under the Espionage Act for sharing secret information leaked by Chelsea Manning.

• On 6 January 2026, Barry Pollack made headlines when Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro hired him to lead his defence. Maduro was facing trial in the US after he was captured in a military operation,

• He filed the case in court on 5 January 2026 in the Southern District of New York. He represented Maduro, who faced serious charges, including narco-terrorism and cocaine import conspiracy.

  

• Chambers USA calls Barry Pollack a thorough and deep-thinking lawyer. According to them, he lives, breathes, and sleeps trials. He has a natural way when speaking to juries. Chambers said,
  

  Barry is very client-focused. He is a terrific lawyer, he is very bright and takes on difficult cases.”

• He is known for doing pro bono work, which means he often provides legal help without charging any fees.