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Overview

Matt M. Dummermuth

Of Counsel

P: 703-888-1943
F: 703-888-1930

Office:
717 King Street, Suite 200
Alexandria VA 22314
United States of America

Email:
Matt@binnall.com

Matt is a committed, scrupulous advocate for justice for his clients. He assists clients with federal and state litigation and governmental and business matters, including those involving constitutional, civil, criminal, civil rights, commercial, and contract issues. 

Prior to joining Binnall Law Group, Matt Dummermuth worked for nearly a decade at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). As the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa and as head of the Office of Justice Programs, Matt successfully led one of DOJ’s 94 U.S. Attorney’s offices across the country as well as one of its major components at Main Justice in Washington, DC. In these and other DOJ roles, Matt gained extensive and high-level expertise in criminal prosecution, civil rights enforcement, constitutional law litigation, affirmative civil enforcement, and civil defense; regulatory changes, congressional matters, and policy development; judicial nominations and confirmations; and DOJ grants and program implementation involving the breadth of DOJ’s anti-violent crime initiatives and crime victim assistance efforts.  

Matt also helped lead and manage the enforcement of our nation’s civil rights laws for several years as a Counsel and Special Assistant in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.  In addition, he worked to nominate and confirm federal judges as a Nominations Counsel in the Office of Legal Policy. Matt also served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for 18 months in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, where he prosecuted felony drug trafficking, firearm, fraud, and immigration cases, prosecuted misdemeanor cases occurring on federal property such as the Pentagon, and represented and defended the United States in a variety of civil matters.  

Before, between, and after his time at DOJ, Matt has worked in private practice for more than a decade in Iowa and Virginia, handling a variety of federal and state litigation and business matters, including those involving constitutional, civil, criminal, civil rights, administrative, agricultural, commercial, contract, property, and tort law. Matt currently splits his time between Virginia and Iowa, and handles cases and matters across the country.

Matt has been active in community and professional organizations ranging from church leadership, religious education, and coaching sports, to serving as a homeschool leader and helping to establish the first Iowa Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society.

Matt graduated from Harvard Law School where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and President of the Harvard Law School Republicans. During college, Matt clerked for the Chairman of the Iowa House Judiciary Committee in Des Moines and interned with U.S. Senator Charles E. Grassley in Washington, DC. After law school, Matt clerked for the Honorable David R. Hansen on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Cedar Rapids. 

Matt grew up on his family’s livestock and crop farm in northeast Iowa and graduated with distinction from Iowa State University with a degree in Agricultural Engineering.

Experience

During the Administration of Donald J. Trump, Matt directed the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), DOJ’s research, statistics, and primary grant-making office, overseeing its operating budgets which exceeded $6 billion and $5 billion, its 14 offices with 1,100 employees and contractors; its financial monitoring of 11,000 DOJ grants totaling nearly $15 billion; and its program monitoring of 8000 OJP grants totaling almost $13 billion.  As Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General (PDAAG), Matt oversaw OJP’s six program offices:  

  • Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) which provides grants and training to state, local, and tribal law enforcement;
  • Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) which provides victim assistance and victim compensation grants and training to state, local, and tribal governments and non-profit organizations)
  • National Institute of Justice (NIJ) which directs DOJ’s criminal justice research projects and grants;
  • Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which manages and reports DOJ’s criminal justice and crime victim statistical studies;
  • Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) which manages DOJ’s initiatives and grants to prevent child exploitation and abuse, investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, and help the victims of such crimes, including Internet crimes against children; missing and exploited children; gang prevention, child advocacy centers, and formula grant programs; and
  • Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) which administers the standards of the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) for all 50 states, five U.S. territories, DC, and 160 tribes.

As PDAAG, Matt also oversaw OJP’s General Counsel’s office and its seven business offices: Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer/IT, Administrative/HR, Communications, Audit Assessment & Management, Civil Rights, and Equal Employment Opportunity.

During his tenure as OJP’s leader, Matt prioritized programs and grants to combat violent crime and the opioid epidemic; support state, local, and tribal law enforcement; and aid crime victims. These included special programs and initiatives to improve federal, state, and local law enforcement cooperation in enforcing violent crime, immigration, child exploitation, sexual abuse, and human trafficking laws; rescuing, assisting, and restoring the victims of such crimes; implementing The First Step Act; targeting crime reduction grant awards to economically distressed Opportunity Zones; and reducing elder fraud and abuse.  In addition, Matt served as the National Amber Alert Coordinator and was a member of the Attorney General’s Religious Liberty Task Force.  

Matt also worked as Nominations Counsel in the Office of Legal Policy during the Trump Administration, interviewing and vetting potential federal judicial nominees, advising nominees throughout the nomination and confirmation process, assisting nominees with Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) filings, and preparing nominees for SJC hearings.  Ultimately, record numbers of federal judges were confirmed during the Trump Administration.

During the Administration of George W. Bush, Matt served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, the chief federal law enforcement officer in the Northern District.  During his tenure, Matt’s office charged and convicted record numbers of child exploitation defendants and persuaded federal, state, and local law enforcement to devote additional investigative resources to such cases; oversaw the successful convictions of 26 defendants, mostly doctors, in the largest Internet pharmacy prosecution in the country at the time involving the illegal distribution of 30 million prescription pills based on 500,000 phony prescriptions, and resulting in a $7 million forfeiture; obtained a $4.5 million civil settlement with a major Iowa hospital to resolve Stark Law-related Medicare false claims allegations; and convicted a chiropractor for Medicaid Fraud and Aggravated Identity Theft, with the prison sentence doubled to more than seven years for stealing the identities of 30 minors. 

As U.S. Attorney, Matt orchestrated the nation’s most successful criminal immigration worksite enforcement action, which arose out of the nation’s largest single-site immigration raid up to that time and involved the largest cooperative federal-state-local law enforcement operation in Iowa history.  Of 389 illegal aliens apprehended in a May 2008 immigration raid, 305 were charged and pled guilty within two weeks to various immigration, document fraud, and identity theft felony offenses, and 24 minors were rescued from unlawful child labor conditions.  Matt’s office later convicted the company’s day-to-day CEO of a $26 million bank fraud, and convicted all key company managers and supervisors, including its CFO and the entire HR department, for a variety of immigration, document, and bank fraud crimes. 

While U.S. Attorney, Matt was an Executive Board Member of the Midwest High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, and a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee’s Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee and its Child Exploitation Working Group.

Prior to serving as U.S. Attorney, Matt served as a Counsel and Special Assistant in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, where he assisted and advised the Assistant Attorney General and Principal Deputies in leading and managing the Division’s litigation, regulatory matters, legislation, and policy work in areas including religious liberty, human trafficking, police misconduct, Title VII employment law, ADA enforcement, and discrimination in areas such as education, housing, voting, public accommodations, and federal contracting programs. 

Honors

Bar Admission

  • State of Iowa

Court Admissions

  • United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
  • United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit
  • United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa
  • United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa

Education

  • Harvard Law School, J.D.
  • Iowa State University, B.S.in Agricultural Engineering