Andrew J. Kline

• Serves as trusted advisor to companies in highly regulated industries, including major consumer brands in alcohol, cannabis, and food and beverage.
• Provides regulatory counsel to Fortune 500 beverage companies on new product innovation and distribution, and to some of the largest brands and multistate operators in the cannabis industry.
• Negotiates complex issues related to state cannabis laws and regulations and the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) before state regulatory bodies.
• Provides ongoing counsel to Fortune 500 fintech companies on emerging industry compliance issues.
• Advises organizations on board governance and conflicts issues.

• Leads cannabis-specific due diligence efforts to support mergers and acquisitions (M&A), including for sensitive and valuation-altering matters.
• Conducts cannabis-related due diligence in support of individual investors and family offices.

• Co-leads corporate internal investigations regarding conflicts of interest and malfeasance, drawing on 14 years of experience as a federal prosecutor.

• Serves as a trusted litigator and advocate with a track record of more than four dozen jury trials.
• Leads client service for one of the nation’s largest cannabis edible manufacturers, including in the successful resolution of claims in a copyright and trade dress infringement case in federal district court.
• Suing the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on behalf of palliative care physician and terminally ill patients.
• Handling breach-of-contract matters for multistate cannabis operators.

• Advises clients on developing privacy law issues.
• Guides clients in navigating novel conflicts related to free speech, privacy, and public safety in scenarios that are fraught with legal and reputational risk.
• Counsel to global technology leaders and emerging companies to respond to and, where appropriate, object to and litigate requests for their users’ data. 
• Counsels technology businesses facing demands from law enforcement, civil litigants, and others in the United States and abroad, seeking information about their customers, such as their online activity, private communications, location information, financial transactions, and other sensitive data.

• Leads public policy for a coalition of the largest multistate cannabis operators to inform and influence the Biden administration's cannabis scheduling process.

• In addition to his legal and policy work, Andrew founded and leads the National Cannabis Lab Coalition (NCLC), leads the Responsibility Committee for the U.S. Cannabis Council (USCC), and serves on the cannabis committees for the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI), and the Colorado Bar Association.
• Andrew previously served as public policy director for the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), the oldest and largest trade organization for the state-legal cannabis industry. He also served as the president of the National Association of Cannabis Businesses (NACB), a self-regulatory organization modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Andrew held several critical roles in the Obama-Biden administration, including crime and drug policy advisor to the vice president, chief of staff and senior advisor to the intellectual property (IP) enforcement coordinator, and enforcement counsel at the FCC. As a policy advisor to then-Vice President Biden, Andrew was responsible for strategic oversight of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), including a $15 billion interagency budget process; President Obama’s drug control strategy; and the anti-drug youth media campaign. He also led White House/executive branch interagency working groups on complex policy issues, including prisoner reentry and drug demand policies. Andrew also co-led the strategic development, interagency coordination, and successful implementation of the president’s IP enforcement strategy, including establishing the first Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC). There, he successfully negotiated public-private partnerships across government agencies and fintech, pharmaceutical, shipping, advertising, and media industries to ensure the global protection of domestic companies’ IP assets and U.S. national security and consumer safety concerns. 

Andrew’s experience as a federal prosecutor includes six years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia. He also served as a federal prosecutor for six years in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section, where he led teams investigating and prosecuting complex and high-profile federal criminal civil rights cases, including excessive use of force under color of law, human trafficking, and hate crimes. Andrew has first chaired more than 40 criminal jury trials and 12 bench trials and has argued numerous criminal appeals. He also conducted hundreds of multiagency investigations during his 14-year tenure at the DOJ.

Andrew is a frequent speaker and media resource and has keynoted or offered expert commentary for Politico, Bloomberg News, Law360, the FDLI, the American Bar Association (ABA), Yale Law and Policy Review, the Attorney General Alliance (AGA), Cannabis World Congress and Business Expo (CWCBExpo), MJBizCon, CannaVest, the Defense Resource Institute, the Claims and Litigation Management Alliance, NCIA’s Cannabis Business Summit and Expo, Cannabis Industry Journal, the New York Bar Association, the United Nations (Vienna), and Vanity Fair.