Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck — Revolving-Door Access Map

Executive ReadoutDisclosed filings only

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, the Senate LDA registrant with the largest disclosed federal lobbying revenue, employs 36 registered lobbyists who disclose prior congressional staff service — covering 45 distinct members of Congress across 48 disclosed ties. Twenty-six of those former principals remain seated in the 119th Congress, and 15 sit on committees whose jurisdictions match the firm’s five most-addressed 2025–26 issue areas.

But LDA covered-position disclosures capture only the visible tip. Of the firm’s 485 professionals, 237 disclose prior federal government service — former Assistant Secretaries of State and the Treasury, a Cabinet-secretary chief of staff, the Staff Director of the Senate Finance Committee, White House and National Security Council aides, and agency commissioners’ chiefs of staff. Many hold the title of strategist, policy director, or practice chair rather than registered lobbyist, and provide expertise behind the scenes without ever filing under the LDA. The deeper bench is mapped in The Full Bench below. Every claim in this brief is a structural co-occurrence among disclosed records; nothing here asserts causation, intent, or influence.

The Full Bench485 professionals · 237 with federal service

The Revolving-Door Map counts only LDA-registered lobbyists whose covered-position disclosures name-match a sitting member. That is a deliberately narrow lens. Not every professional with a government background registers under the LDA — many work as strategists, policy directors, or subject-matter experts, laying out strategy and providing expertise behind the scenes without filing. Counting the firm’s biographies rather than its LDA registrations surfaces a much deeper bench.

Spotlight — marquee government alumni now at the firm

Each card links to the professional’s biography on the firm’s website.

Revolving-Door Mapconfidence ≥ 0.75 · exact match

All 48 strict-tier ties, sorted by tie seniority. Roles are quoted or condensed from each lobbyist’s own LDA covered-position disclosure. Confidence is 1.0 unless footnoted.

¹ Usyk → Gillibrand: confidence 0.95, exact first-and-last name match. All other rows: confidence 1.0.

Committee-Access Layer119th Congress

The 26 still-seated former principals and their 119th Congress committee assignments. Five committee chairmanships and two ranking-member posts appear among them. Sixteen House members in this set hold seats on the 2026 ballot. Sen. McConnell — Rules Chairman and the senior-most Senate tie (Brian McGuire, chief-of-staff grade) — is retiring at the end of 2026, opening his Kentucky seat rather than facing voters.

Pivotal seats — sitting Senate chairs with disclosed staff ties

Sen. Chuck Grassley

Judiciary Chair

Aaron Cummings — Chief of Staff; Chief Counsel, Senate Judiciary (conf. 1.0)

Sen. Tim Scott

Banking Chair

Travis Norton — Counsel (conf. 1.0)

Sen. Mike Lee

Energy & Natural Resources Chair

Matt Grinney — Communications Advisor (conf. 1.0)

Sen. Ted Cruz

Commerce Chair

Brandt Anderson — Military Legislative Assistant (conf. 1.0)

Reps. Katherine Clark and Nancy Pelosi are also still-seated former principals; Clark holds no standing-committee seat as Minority Whip, and Pelosi’s tie is intern-grade. Both seats are up in 2026.

Client–Issue OverlayThe book of business

Brownstein discloses 416 clients in its 2025 LDA filings. Its twenty largest accounts by reported fees are shown below, followed by how the firm’s most-addressed issue areas intersect with the committee seats of its still-seated former principals. Every figure is a disclosed fee or filing count; nothing here measures contact, advocacy, or outcome.

Top 20 clients by disclosed 2025 fees

Issue areas & alumni jurisdictions

Brownstein’s 2025–26 LDA filings name these as its most-addressed issue areas, intersected with the committee seats of still-seated former principals. This issue-jurisdiction ∩ former-principal-seat intersection is the core co-occurrence of this brief: it counts disclosed filings landing in committees where a disclosed staff-alumni tie also exists. It does not measure contact, advocacy, or outcome.

Representative 2025 clients in overlapping issue areas

Contribution LayerLD-203 · 2025–26 cycle

LD-203 contribution filings by the firm and its lobbyists, calendar 2025–26, where the recipient committee matches a former principal identified in the Revolving-Door Map. Total: $29,750 across 10 former principals.

Same-person co-occurrences

The firm PAC’s $17,000 across eight former principals and the lobbyists’ personal contributions are all itemized FECA contributions on LD-203 filings; amounts are small relative to both campaign budgets and the firm’s $73.87M 2025 lobbying revenue. They are reported because they complete the disclosed-filing triangle (staff tie + client issue + contribution), not because the dollar volumes are independently significant.

The firm PAC at scale — FEC disbursements, 2024 vs 2026

The figures above are LD-203 lobbying-report contributions. Brownstein’s connected federal PAC — BHFS-E, PC PAC — also files directly with the FEC. Across all federal candidates it disbursed $992,000 in the 2024 cycle and $608,000 so far in 2026, spread across 302 and 231 recipient committees respectively. Its own former principals are a small share of that giving.

Strategic Implications

2026 exposure — former principals facing voters, plus McConnell’s open seat

Reads by customer segment

• Consultants / government-affairs teams: the firm-anchored view inverts the standard bill-anchored question — instead of “who lobbies this bill,” it answers “which committee rooms does this firm’s alumni network co-occur with,” a benchmark for evaluating counsel coverage by committee.
• Journalists: every row above is independently checkable against a public filing (LDA registration, LD-203, FEC itemization). The Conboy-DePasquale → Clark triangle is the cleanest single illustration of a fully disclosed staff-tie + contribution co-occurrence.
• Recognition data point: Brownstein’s David Reid appears in the recognition layer as a National Institute for Lobbying & Ethics “Top Lobbyists” honoree; Leah Dempsey, also a current Brownstein-registered lobbyist, is reported as a 2025 NILE Top Lobbyist honoree.