Chris Hales is a former federal prosecutor who has tried, litigated, and supervised hundreds of cases in California’s federal courts. With over two decades of prosecution and law firm experience, Chris navigates clients through corporate internal investigations, inquiries from enforcement and regulatory authorities, complex litigation, and allegations of white-collar crime.
Chris has deep experience handling sophisticated criminal and civil matters. Before joining Illovsky Gates & Calia LLP, Chris was the Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California. In that role, Chris advised the U.S. Attorney and First Assistant on major criminal and civil case decisions, including those requiring coordination with Main Justice. Prior to this executive role, Chris was Chief of Special Prosecutions and a line prosecutor, handling some of the office’s most sophisticated white-collar cases, including the largest fraud in district history. He has litigated and supervised financial and investment crimes, tax evasion, money laundering, public corruption, securities fraud, antitrust violations, environmental crimes, obstruction of justice, immigration matters, and government benefits fraud. While at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Chris tried 10 federal criminal jury trials to verdict and argued seven appeals at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Before serving as a federal prosecutor, Chris was at the international law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP from 2004 to 2011, where he defended corporate and individual clients in criminal antitrust investigations and parallel civil litigation, class actions, and SEC investigations of insider trading and frontrunning.
Chris has also been closely involved with the workings of the federal court system in California. He served as a Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California (2022-2024), as Co-Chair for the Eastern District of California Judicial Conference (2023-2024), and on the Ninth Circuit Lawyer Representatives Coordinating Committee (2022-2024). He has also served as a lab instructor for Trial Practice I and has guest lectured on plea negotiations and closing arguments at the UC Davis King Hall School of Law.