ALAN E. SEARS, ESQUIREPresident, CEO, & General Counsel
Alan Sears is the President, CEO, and General Counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the largest religious liberty legal alliance in America.
Since its launch in 1994, Alan has led the strategy, training, funding, and subsequent litigation efforts of the ministry that have resulted in ADF’s critical role in 33 victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and wins in nearly 3 out of 4 of cases litigated to conclusion. Under his leadership, ADF has funded more than 2,000 grants and legal projects for allied lawyers and organizations and ADF attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in over 30 cases nationwide.
Alan has provided strategic leadership in the training of nearly 1,200 allied lawyers through the ADF one of a kind National Litigation Academy. The NLA is designed to equip attorneys to more effectively defend religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family. Since 1997, these attorneys have reported more than $80 million in pro-bono/dedicated time. Alan’s visionary efforts have also resulted in the graduation of more than 700 outstanding law students, representing more than 130 universities, from the ADF Blackstone Legal Fellowship program. This in-depth summer leadership program helps equip these students to assume leadership positions to shape the future of American law.
Alan has helped fashion the language for numerous state and federal laws and has testified before committees of the U.S. House and Senate, state legislatures, and many local governments and commissions. Legislators in twenty states adopted his legislative recommendations. He has also spoken before committees of the British Parliament and at the Vatican. He has trained hundreds of law enforcement officials from Australia to Scotland Yard, and has lectured internationally on religious freedom. As a result of his impressive record, the American Bar Association’s magazine,
Barrister, recognized him as one of the outstanding young lawyers in America.
Alan also served in numerous positions within the United States Government, serving in the Department of Justice, under Attorneys General William French Smith and Edwin Meese III as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Section, and was appointed as the Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. He also was an Associate Solicitor in the Department of the Interior under Secretary Donald Hodel.
Alan has co-authored several books, including:
The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today (2003) and
The ACLU vs. America (2005) both with Craig Osten.
A graduate of the University of Kentucky, with a Juris Doctor from Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, Alan completed his post-graduate/continuing education at Harvard Law School, Stanford University, and Pepperdine University. He is a member in good standing with the American, Arizona, California, District of Columbia, and Kentucky Bar Associations.