Ballard Spahr, WilmerHale Alum Joins Donor Consultancy (Correct)

Michael Gordon, a financial services lawyer who worked at Ballard Spahr and WilmerHale, is the new general counsel for Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm that helps to fund and manage nonprofits.

Gordon, who also once served as a senior counselor at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, started May 6 at Arabella. He succeeds Saurabh Gupta, who last month became general counsel for the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit that works on issues such as climate change.

Arabella is among so-called dark money groups that through intermediaries contributed at least $63 million during the 2020 election cycle to super PACs backing Democrats or opposing Republicans, the New York Times reported in 2021. Such groups get their name because they don’t have to disclose who is behind the unlimited and anonymous donations to political nonprofits.

Gordon will aid Arabella’s “mission of enabling clients across the philanthropic sector to tackle society’s biggest challenges,” he said in a statement. He’ll work to ensure Arabella’s legal and compliance teams “remain robust and responsive to the evolving needs of our community and clients.”

Gordon didn’t respond to a comment request.

He most recently was of counsel at Ballard Spahr in Washington, where he joined the law firm as a partner two years ago after co-chairing the financial technology practice at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings.

Prior to law school Gordon was an aide to former Senator John Glenn, an Ohio Democrat, and he started his legal career as a litigation associate at WilmerHale. The firm hired him as a partner in 2015 after Gordon left the Obama administration, where he worked in the Treasury Department and was named a deputy general counsel at the CFPB when the regulator was formed in 2011.

Gordon left WilmerHale in 2017 to become general counsel and chief compliance officer for BlueWave MA LLC, a solar and renewable energy company that like Arabella is a certified B corporation, a designation used for companies that meet certain social impact and environmental standards.

“Mike’s deep legal and compliance experience, coupled with his profound understanding of Arabella’s ethos, makes him an ideal fit for our team,” said a statement from Himesh Bhise, who in November was named president and chief executive officer of Arabella.

A handful of nonprofit funds affiliated with Arabella paid almost $52.1 million in fees to the for-profit organization in 2022, according to federal tax filings. Those funds also paid at least $20.5 million in legal fees that year—the most recent for which records are available—to the Elias Law Group and more than $1.7 million to Perkins Coie.

Marc Elias, a veteran political law litigator, left the partnership at Perkins Coie to start his own firm in 2021.

Arabella a year ago laid off more than 30 employees, or 10% of its workforce, and has found itself in the crosshairs of conservative media outlets and organizations that have accused the consultancy of backing left-wing causes, including activities and protests that some consider to be anti-Israel.

After scorning the practice, Democrats embraced dark money in an effort to defeat former President Donald Trump, Bloomberg News reported in 2021. Arabella has often sparred with dark money counterparts from the opposite end of the political spectrum, according to a Bloomberg News report last year.

The US Supreme Court’s ruling in a landmark election finance case smoothed the way for dark money to become a major political factor.