Nick Reaves

Nick Reaves joined Becket in 2018. Since then, his practice has focused on First Amendment appellate litigation. Nick has worked on precedent-setting religious liberty cases nationwide and has argued in federal trial and appellate courts across the country. Nick has represented Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians, among others—all seeking the freedom to practice their faith. His advocacy has helped secure crucial religious freedom victories for these clients. In January 2022, Nick joined Yale Law School’s faculty as a Visiting Clinical Lecturer in Law. His academic writings have also been published in prestigious journals like the Yale Law Journal Forum, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy Per Curiam, the Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, and the Notre Dame Law Review Reflection.

Before joining Becket, Nick was an associate at Jones Day in Washington, D.C. His practice included both trial and appellate litigation. While at the firm, Nick argued cases in both federal trial and appellate courts, helped counsel clients in bet-the-company matters, took an asylum case to trial, and oversaw a sensitive internal investigation which could have exposed a Fortune 100 company to billions of dollars in liability. Prior to joining Jones Day, Nick clerked for Chief Judge D. Brooks Smith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Nick graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served on the Managing Board of the Virginia Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. While in law school, Nick published an academic article on crisis chaplaincy programs which won first prize in a nationwide student writing competition. He also participated in the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and studied legal ethics in Germany and Poland as part of the Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics. Nick graduated from the University of Notre Dame’s Glynn Family Honors Program magna cum laude with a double major in Economics and Political Science.