Richard Hong

Richard Hong is a Partner in Dentons' Commercial Litigation group and White Collar and Government Investigations practice, resident in the New York office. His primary practice area is White Collar Crime.

Prior to joining Dentons, he built a distinguished career as one of the most experienced trial lawyers in the SEC's Division of Enforcement. In his over 17 years of experience, he served as senior trial counsel in New York and assistant chief litigation counsel in Washington, DC, where he litigated nearly every type of federal securities violation. His work often involved parallel criminal actions with the DOJ's Fraud Section, US Attorney's Offices and state enforcement authorities.

He litigated some of the highest-profile and difficult post-financial-crisis cases, including the Bear Stearns and Fannie Mae subprime disclosure frauds. He also worked on accounting frauds, ADR sales practice violations, asset freezes, audit failures, breach of fiduciary duty and conflict-of-interest cases, CMBS bond trading frauds, cryptocurrency frauds, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations (involving a receivership), insider trading, investment adviser and hedge fund frauds, market manipulations, offering frauds, a stop-order AP proceeding and subpoena enforcement matters.

A veteran trial lawyer, he has tried 43 federal civil and criminal cases—41 of them jury trials—across the US. At the SEC, he led multi-week trials, including complex accounting and disclosure fraud cases. From 2019 to 2022, he tried two federal jury trials in the Southern District of New York, tied for the most by any Enforcement Division attorney during that period.

Earlier in his career, he served as a federal prosecutor at the DOJ and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, where he specialised in white-collar grand jury investigations and prosecuted complex cases involving bank fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. As lead or principal trial counsel, he tried over 30 cases to verdict in less than six years and argued eight appeals before the Eleventh Circuit. He earned the Attorney General's John Marshall Award, DOJ's highest honour for attorneys.

In private practice, he successfully defended a cryptocurrency platform from an SEC enforcement action—dissolving a TRO, forcing the SEC to move to dismiss its own action, and receiving court-awarded attorneys' fees as a sanction—widely viewed as one of the SEC's worst defeats in its history. He also negotiated and obtained for a private fund facing SEC registration issues one of the most favourable settlements in the "Dealer Rule" space, and represented a CEO and companies facing substantial federal criminal charges and forfeiture in a pre-indictment matter, resulting in the Government granting a deferred prosecution application in May 2025.

His recognition includes being named to Securities Docket's 2025 Enforcement Elite List, Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, the Chairman's Award for Excellence (SEC), Division Director's Awards (SEC Enforcement Division, awarded 12 times), the Award for Excellence from the President's Council for Integrity and Efficiency, and the Attorney General's John Marshall Award (for Litigation) from the US Department of Justice.

He serves on several New York City Bar Association committees, including as Chair of the Federal Courts Committee, and is a faculty member for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York City Bar Association and a member of the American Bar Association's International White Collar Crime Committee.

He holds a JD from Fordham University School of Law and an AB from Columbia College of Columbia University. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert Holmes Bell, District Judge, United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan.