Following his clerkship, Cohen began his law career at the firm Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, a “criminal-defense boutique” in Washington, D.C. He specialized in white-collar criminal defense and civil litigation. He was hired by the
U.S. Treasury Department in 1999 as an aide to General Counsel
Neal S. Wolin and then as Acting Deputy General Counsel. While there he was credited by department officials with "crafting legislation that formed the basis" of
Title III of the
USA PATRIOT Act, dealing with money laundering. In 2001 he left the government and joined the Washington law firm
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, now known as WilmerHale. He practiced there for seven years, becoming partner in 2004. His practice areas included complex civil litigation, white-collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance. In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Cohen to be
Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing in the
Treasury Department, and the
U.S. Senate confirmed him on May 1, 2009. Variously described by members of the
Obama administration as a "financial
Batman" and one of the president's "favorite combatant commanders", he was, two years later, nominated and confirmed as
Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. In that role, he "preside[d] over a 700-person, $200 million-a-year counterterrorism office within Treasury that was created after the September 11, 2001, attacks" and includes the
Office of Foreign Assets Control, which implements U.S. economic sanctions. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Cohen singled-out the
government of Kuwait for rebuke, noting that "we have a real challenge with the
Kuwaiti government. Kuwait is the only government in the
Gulf Cooperation Council that does not criminalize terrorist financing." The following year, Cohen appeared as speaker at the annual forum of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In 2015, Cohen was appointed Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. At the time of his appointment, some speculated that Cohen's selection was due to the Obama administration's reluctance in picking someone with ties to past incidences of
CIA torture and
extraordinary rendition. The post of deputy director has traditionally been filled by military officers or
intelligence community veterans. ==Personal life==