Jessica Pulliam is Chair of the Trial Department in Dallas and Co-Chair of the firmwide Securities and Shareholder Litigation Group. Jessica defends high-stakes lawsuits against public companies and their officers and directors, private enterprises and professional firms.
Chambers USA has called her “Excellent” (2019) and commented: “‘[s]he is a phenomenal architect of litigation strategy’" (2020) and “[s]he's a real star lawyer - she has a strong legal mind and brings solid preparation to everything.” (2021). Law360 (2019) and The Legal 500 (2021) have recognized Jessica's leadership in the field of securities and shareholder litigation. Jessica has tried cases in Delaware and Texas, regularly appears before regulatory agencies including the SEC and PCAOB and conducts internal investigations. Her litigation experience ranges from financial fraud and accounting restatements matters to suits involving wrongful death, whistleblowers and corporate crisis. She excels at telling a client's story and helping witnesses - everyone from a former Vice President of the United States and multiple CEOs to hard-hat wearing field workers - during testimony.
Jessica takes bold positions for her clients, driving critical legal change in multiple fields:
- Jessica defended Halliburton Company for more than a decade in one of the most closely watched securities cases of all time, securing for defendants the right to rebut the presumption of reliance at class certification in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2398 (2014) and then handling direct and cross examination of expert witnesses in the first evidentiary hearing of its kind following that landmark ruling.
- Her work defending officers and directors in a derivative suit recently led the court to comment that the excess length of the allegations was a futile attempt to make the court conclude “that there’s a lot of smoke and so there must also be fire,” Smith v. Carrillo, Civ. Action No. 18-1399-RGA (Nov. 26, 2019).;
- Jessica’s defense of a professional firm led to not only a take-nothing judgment but also a new standard in Texas for determining when reliance on an allegedly false statement is justified, Grant Thornton LLP v. Prospect High Income Fund, 314 S.W.3d 913 (Tex. 2010). Building on her work in Grant Thornton, Jessica crafted the defense for a major financial institution that led to yet another take-nothing judgment in JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. Orca Assets G.P., L.L.C., 546 S.W.3d 648 (Tex. 2018), reh'g denied (June 15, 2018), which held that the presence of red flags, including a contractual negation of warranty, negated any reliance on allegedly fraudulent statements as a matter of law
Following graduation from law school, Jessica served as law clerk to the Honorable Barbara M.G. Lynn of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Jessica is active in the community. She long served as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Dallas Contemporary, Dallas' contemporary art museum. She serves as a Director of the Texas Law Review Association. She actively supports many other organizations including Attorneys Serving the Community, an organization of women lawyers supporting local nonprofits.