[7] He served as Special Counsel[8] to a task force created by the Governor of New Jersey to investigate the administration of the state's tax incentive programs.
[11] While an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, Walden led the prosecution of Li Yun-chung, a significant figure in an international heroin ring.
[20] In 2001, Walden led the successful prosecution of Anthony Spero, a soldier and one-time acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, on murder and racketeering charges.
Walden co-chaired Gibson Dunn's White Collar-Criminal Defense & Investigations practice in addition to leading the office's pro bono efforts.
[30] In 2013, Walden represented Molly Bloom, who was arrested[31] and charged as part of a $100 million illegal poker game in Los Angeles that attracted wealthy individuals and celebrities.
[33] In 2019, Walden initiated representation of Tether, a cryptocurrency stablecoin company, in a consolidated class action lawsuit alleging $1.4 trillion in market manipulation damages.
[34] In 2020, Walden defended William Anderson in a case stemming from a $30 million fraud and money-laundering investigation of Newsweek magazine executives, and related criminal charges, filed by the Manhattan District Attorney.
[48] In 2013, Walden negotiated a voluntary settlement with New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman on behalf of CareCredit LLC, a subsidiary of GE Capital Retail Bank.
[49] At the time of the inquiry, CareCredit was the largest issuer of consumer health care financing in the United States, with approximately 160,000 providers nationwide.
[50] Walden represented TRW Deutschland Holding GmbH, a global auto parts manufacturer, in connection with an international antitrust investigation spearheaded by the United States Department of Justice in 2012.
[51] TRW agreed to a favorable plea arrangement for its involvement in a conspiracy to fix prices of seat belts, airbags and steering wheels installed in cars sold in the United States.
[61] On January 24, 2019, the office of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced that Jim Walden was selected as Special Counsel to a Task Force assigned to investigate the tax incentive program of the state's Economic Development Agency.
[62] In his time at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, and continuing at the firm he founded, Walden brought several cases against governmental and employer overreach and abuse.
In conjunction with the Mental Health Project at the Urban Justice Center, Walden was the lead attorney in a 2011 class action lawsuit against five Queens, NY administrative law judges alleging bias against Social Security applicants.
The lawsuit charged that thousands of people were illegally denied food stamps after they moved to receive Social Security disability payments instead of welfare benefits.
[66] Walden was instrumental in negotiating a settlement with the State University of New York in litigation involving the sale of Long Island College Hospital.
[67] The settlement deal opened the door to keep the site a hospital and required officials to consult with unions and the community before choosing a proposal.
[73] The suit asked the city to develop improved means of addressing school violence and appoint an independent monitor to oversee the DOE's progress.
The settlement also required DOE to grant a substantive new right to a safety transfer if the victim feels unsafe in the school despite other forms of remediation.
Walden noted that "This settlement finally brings meaningful reform to a troubled and broken system that placed every New York City school student in dire and dangerous circumstances.
Taken out at dawn and shot.”[96] The lawsuit was filed against diGenova, the Trump campaign, and Newsmax, alleging "defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, aiding and abetting, and civil conspiracy".
[110][111][112] Hazelwood faced up to twenty years in prison, but Walden argued for leniency, presenting evidence that the alleged criminal activity had no financial impact on Pilot's customers.
[123] Kaiser acted as a whistleblower about her knowledge of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal which exposed more than 87 million Facebook accounts to abuse and may have impacted the outcome of the 2016 US presidential campaign.
[129] Despite overwhelming evidence of doping, in February 2018 the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) issued a ruling to reinstate 28 Russian athletes who had appealed their lifetime bans on competition.
The millions of dollars spent by the WADA and the IOC to gather and assemble proof of the Russian doping system appear to have been for nothing: The CAS panel brushed it all aside with the stroke of a pen.
[131]In February 2018, Walden testified before the U.S. Helsinki Commission to discuss global corruption in international sport and, specifically, the efforts by Russia to circumvent doping testing.
"[133] In February 2018, Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, who is controlling owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, agreed to finance a defamation lawsuit in New York against Rodchenkov.
Walden testified before the Helsinki Commission for a second time on July 25, 2018, along with Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Yulia Stepanova, a former Russian track star, and Katie Uhlaender, an American skeleton racer who finished fourth in the Sochi Olympics.
[139] Walden has been highly critical of WADA's efforts to properly reprimand Russia for that country's decades-old state-sponsored sports doping program.
"[140][141][142] Walden has suggested that the United States is wasting its money funding for WADA because the organization "is obviously impotent to address Russia's state-sponsored doping.