Richard W. Downing was selected to serve as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice in September 2015, where he oversees the work of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.  In this role, Mr. Downing supervises the prosecution of hacking, intellectual property theft, and child exploitation crimes, and he has worked to promote the international law enforcement cooperation necessary to respond to these criminal threats.  Mr. Downing has participated in the development of Department policy on the collection of electronic evidence and related litigation.    

Mr. Downing joined the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in 1999.  Prior to that, he served for seven years as an Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia.  He graduated with a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1992 and received a B.A. in Political Science, summa cum laude, from Yale University in 1989.