Ian Gold is Of Counsel to The Law Offices of Alan Ellis in its new Boston office. Ian began his legal career in 2003 as an associate in the Law Office of Jesse M. Siegel in New York City, where he worked on criminal defense and civil rights cases in federal court. After moving to Massachusetts in 2006, he served as a trial attorney for the state’s public defender agency for two years.
From 2008 to 2014, Ian served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender (AFPD) in Boston, where he represented more than 200 defendants charged with felony crimes, at the trial level and on appeal. Of note, he briefed, argued and won the case for the appellant in United States v. Brima Wurie, the First Circuit case which established that a warrant is required before police may search an arrested person’s smartphone, a ruling subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court.
As an AFPD, Ian represented the majority of the first group of respondents selected for civil commitment as “Sexually Dangerous Persons” under the federal Adam Walsh Act when it came into effect in 2008. He has lectured and presented trainings on civil commitment defense to public defender groups: the Sex Offender Commitment Defense Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He has served as an expert witness on the Adam Walsh Act and testified for the respondent in extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom. He currently represents individuals committed as sexually dangerous in the federal system by special appointment in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Ian is a 2002 graduate of New York University School of Law. He holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he studied liberal arts and minored in Spanish language and literature. He is fluent in English and Spanish. During law school, he interned at the Brennan Center for Justice. Ian also served as a teaching assistant to professor Peggy Cooper Davis and a paid research assistant to politics professor Lawrence Mead on the politics of welfare reform, a post in which he continued after graduation.
