Eric Montalvo, Founding Partner of Federal Practice Group, Named One of the 2020 Veterans in Business Awards Honorees by Washington Business Journal

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Ask Eric Montalvo about his time in the Marine Corps, and he’ll throw a couple movie references your way.

Enlisting in 1988? Think Goldie Hawn in “Private Benjamin.”

“I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about,” Montalvo says. “It made me grow up really quickly.”

And leaving the military in 2009 for a private practice career? He’ll compare that to “Shawshank Redemption.”

Eric Montalvo during is time in the Marines

“I found out pretty quickly I had been institutionalized,” he says. “In the military, the good thing is they have structure. I came out here and I was basically a clerk, working with people who didn’t share my value system. I didn’t feel comfortable.”

A New York native who went to college in Florida, Montalvo initially joined the Marines to refocus his priorities. He had known from a young age that he wanted to practice law. But his route to the courtroom took a bit longer than he had anticipated.

After enlisting, Montalvo reassured his mother that, as part of a tank battalion, he was unlikely to see much action.

“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.

What unique challenges do such high-profile cases pose? It’s an interesting issue. As a trial attorney, your objective almost always is to control every aspect and every communication on a case. When you get the media on top of you, you can’t control any of that. So it enhances the risk to the client in an exponential way. If the wrong messaging goes out, it puts your client in a bad light. It taints society’s opinion, it taints their future on the internet. I decline most of the media on the cases that I have because I don’t know that it is in my client’s best interest. But the stories that you’ve seen out there, I made the decision to make sure the media at least had the other side of the story to consider.

Eric Montalvo

Founding partner, Federal Practice Group

Age: 51

Residence: Prince William County

Family: Daughter and two sons

Branch: Marine Corps

Highest rank: "Mustang" Major

Dates of service: 1988 to 2009

Eric Montalvo, Founding Partner of Federal Practice Group, Named One of the 2020 Veterans in Business Awards Honorees by Washington Business Journal

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Eric Montalvo, Founding Partner of Federal Practice Group, Named One of the 2020 Veterans in Business Awards Honorees by Washington Business Journal

News & Media

Employment

Federal Criminal

Government Contracting

Guest Blog

Immigration

In the News

International Law

Litigation

Military

VETERANS IN BUSINESS AWARDS

News & Media

Employment

Federal Criminal

Government Contracting

Guest Blog

Immigration

In the News

International Law

Litigation

Military

Share This Story

Fighting for Justice

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