Roger Polack

Roger Polack is a Professional Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University Law School, teaching courses on U.S. constitutional and international human rights law. He is a Trial Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, Office of International Affairs, where he litigates international extradition cases, including those involving human trafficking, war crimes, and organized crime. He also advises prosecutors on novel and complex legal issues stemming from international aspects of their cases.

Mr. Polack has extensive experience in public international law, investigations, and litigation. As Senior Legal Counsel and Visiting Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School’s Schell Center for International Human Rights, Mr. Polack led major legal analyses of international crimes and human rights violations. He participated in numerous research missions throughout Asia, interviewing witnesses and survivors of atrocity crimes, engaging with host country and United Nations officials, and advising on sanctions policy and accountability measures. While in private practice at a major international law firm, Mr. Polack practiced public international law, litigation, and internal investigations. He was part of a legal team practicing before the International Court of Justice, and he represented clients in internal investigations and government enforcement actions related to sanctions violations, false claims, and other criminal and regulatory matters. Mr. Polack had a robust pro bono practice, focusing on international human rights and international criminal law.

Prior to joining private practice, Mr. Polack spent a decade in the U.S. government with the U.S. Department of the Treasury working on intelligence, financial sanctions, and national security. He served as an intelligence analyst specializing in terrorist financing in Southeast Asia before deploying to Afghanistan as Deputy-Director of Intelligence for the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, leading investigations into insurgent financing and high-level corruption. He later served as a senior sanctions policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) and reviewed foreign investments for national security concerns as part of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ("CFIUS").

Mr. Polack earned his JD magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif. He holds a BA in Political Science, Asian Studies, and International Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He speaks Thai and German and has studied Burmese and Arabic.