“Two weeks later, I was on the tarmac confronting a car bomb,” Montalvo says of his time in Operation Desert Storm. “Over the next seven months, I was living in relative isolation, waiting to go in. You see dead people, you have to shoot at people. There’s a lot of things going on for a young person that’s a shock to the system.”
The experience had Montalvo focused on the future. He eventually joined a program that led to the Judge Advocate Division, where — after serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom – he practiced military law until retiring from the Marines and entering private practice.
Now, as founding partner of D.C. law firm Federal Practice Group, Montalvo focuses his practice on both federal and international legal issues, including military law and national security.
What pushed you to join the Marine Corps? I went to school in Florida after growing up in New York. Warm weather and thoughts of law school danced in my head. I wasn’t paying full attention. At one point, I said, “How could I get myself together? What has some structure?” I wound up digging holes in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert.
And what led to the legal field? When I was around 12, a good friend was killed by a neighbor. I remember it like yesterday. When I saw him in the casket, it was wrong. That really galvanized my focus on the law. I started participating in some civic committees and things in high school and victim advocacy got baked into my DNA at that point. My yearbook talks about me becoming a lawyer. It really pushed me into the idea of how to hold people accountable.
Proudest moments in work for you? As a prosecutor, I prosecuted a number of people who were bad actors. I was very proud of holding those people accountable. I was proud of doing my job in the right way. On the civilian side, the Gitmo commissions and getting Mohamed Jawad released. I feel like that is a complete travesty of justice. He was absolutely tortured. The United States, I love it, but we were wrong there. I worked so hard to get him released with the team. I was very thankful for that.
