Karen Patton Seymour

Karen Patton Seymour is a partner of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and a member of the Firm’s Management Committee, and former co-managing partner of the Litigation Group. She has a multidisciplinary practice focusing on corporate governance, crisis management, complex commercial litigation, white-collar criminal defense and internal investigations. Karen rejoined the Firm from Goldman Sachs, where she served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel and was a member of the Management Committee from 2018 through March 2021.
She was in charge of the firm’s global legal division and oversaw strategy regarding class action and other litigation and enforcement issues and served as a key advisor to the firm across a wide variety of legal, reputational and other matters. She successfully resolved a number of important matters on
behalf of the firm and was key in negotiating the firm’s most critical legal matters, including the resolution of multiple criminal and regulatory investigations in jurisdictions around the world
relating to the Malaysia sovereign development company, 1MDB.
From 2002 to 2004, Karen served as Chief of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she supervised 165 federal prosecutors and oversaw all criminal investigations and prosecutions in the district. During her first tenure in the U.S. Attorney’s Office from1990 to 1996, she prosecuted a wide variety of cases and served as Chief of the General Crimes Unit.