Prior to joining Goodwin, Mr. Kistner served in the Obama administration as Confidential Assistant to the Department of Homeland Security’s General Counsel and as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security. At the Department of Homeland Security, he helped to draft internal reports and reports to Congress on export control and other national security issues and worked on issues related to comprehensive immigration reform. Before his service in the administration, Mr. Kistner was a staffer on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, directing the campaign’s organization in western New Hampshire during the general election.
Mr. Kistner has also served as Special Assistant District Attorney in the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he appeared in state court on a daily basis. While there, he prosecuted hundreds of cases, argued dozens of motions, and represented the Commonwealth in numerous bench and jury trials.
Mr. Kistner is a partner with the Truman National Security Project and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Environmental Voter Project. He has written several op-eds on Homeland Security policy that have been published in the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, and elsewhere. He is also the author of Federalist Tycoon: The Life and Times of Israel Thorndike (University Press of America, 2015).
While in law school, Mr. Kistner was a summer law clerk at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, working in the Anti-Terrorism and National Security Unit, and was a staff member of the Boston University International Law Journal.
