Justin Gelfand, a founding partner at Margulis Gelfand in St. Louis, Missouri, is a former federal prosecutor with extensive experience in high stakes litigation. A seasoned trial attorney, Gelfand focuses his practice on criminal defense, white collar matters, and sophisticated civil litigation. 

Gelfand joined the U.S. Department of Justice in 2009 through the Attorney General’s Honors Program and was assigned to the Tax Division’s Southern Criminal Enforcement Section. Based in Washington, D.C. for more than four years, Gelfand prosecuted a wide range of federal criminal cases throughout the country, including criminal tax, financial fraud, identity theft, offshore banking, immigration fraud, passport fraud, money laundering, international tax evasion and other matters. Gelfand also served as a faculty member at the National Advocacy Center, the U.S. Department of Justice’s legal academy in South Carolina, where he taught hundreds of federal prosecutors the ins and outs of criminal tax cases. He played a large role in crafting the innovative means by which stolen identity tax refund fraud cases are now investigated and prosecuted, and trained more than 1,000 federal agents in 15 states on investigative techniques utilized by law enforcement today. For this work, Gelfand received the 2013 Attorney General’s Award for Fraud Prevention, an award widely recognized as one of the Justice Department’s highest honors in the field of white collar and public corruption litigation. 

In private practice, Gelfand has tried cases in state and federal courts throughout the country. Cases he has tried range from high-profile to low-profile and when in his client’s best interest, Gelfand routinely resolves cases outside of the courtroom—often with no publicity. Gelfand has served as an adjunct professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and is routinely invited to present to private practitioners at national conferences from coast to coast. 

For the past several years, Gelfand has also taught as a member of the faculty of Harvard Law School's Trial Advocacy Workshop. 

Gelfand graduated in the top 5% of his class at Washington University School of Law and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. During law school, Gelfand was Senior Editor of the Washington University Law Review and a two-time national quarterfinalist on the law school’s moot court team. Gelfand received his undergraduate degree with high honors from Brandeis University.