Ben Tompkins: Former DOJ Tax Division Trial Attorney and AUSA

Ben Tompkins is a partner at Nardiello Turanchik Tompkins, where he defends clients in civil and criminal tax matters. He spent about eleven years at the Department of Justice: as a trial attorney in the Tax Division’s Civil Trial Section, then as an Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles handling civil and criminal tax cases. He also served on the faculty of the National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina, training new Department lawyers in trial advocacy.

Before the Tax Division, he clerked for the D.C. Court of Appeals and practiced class-action defense at a firm with offices in D.C., Florida, and Connecticut. In 2017 he left government for a white-collar boutique in Kansas City. He chairs the Criminal Tax Enforcement Subcommittee of the ABA Tax Section’s Civil and Criminal Tax Penalties Committee.

He earned his J.D. with high honors from the George Washington University Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif, and his B.A. from Pepperdine University. He received the Attorney General’s Outstanding Attorney Award six consecutive years, from 2008 through 2013, and he is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. His firm’s site is nt-llp.com.

Ben Tompkins joins Alexander Powell to explain why he applied to the Tax Division without tax credentials: he wanted hands-on litigation experience, and the Division had openings. He landed in the Southern Section of the Civil Trial Section, now the tax location branch of the Civil Division.

They discuss the case that made the job feel real: a high-profile Internal Revenue Code section 6103 disclosure action tied to the Obama-era IRS nonprofit-targeting investigations, where he led depositions of IRS employees, including the person accused of leaking a donor’s identity. On handling press in that case: “You’re representing the United States. You took an oath and you just carry out the oath.”

The conversation turns to Los Angeles, where the U.S. Attorney’s Office had its own tax unit, then to teaching new Department lawyers at the National Advocacy Center. One trial lesson: if the judge has already decided, sit down. On cross: “If you make a good point and you think you’ve done your job, you sit down.”

They close with mentorship in the ABA Tax Section, what practitioners are hearing about DOJ’s structural changes and the National Fraud Enforcement Division, eggshell audits, the 2017 move from Los Angeles to a Kansas City white-collar boutique, and advice to younger lawyers: take the government job if you get it. “There’s no substitute for the experience you get.”

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