Ronak D. Desai

Guest Author

Ronak D. Desai (LinkedIn – X) is Partner and firmwide leader of the Congressional Investigations and India practices at Paul Hastings LLP. Ronak also advises clients on a broad range of complex investigative, regulatory, litigation, compliance, and public policy matters. He has extensive legal and policy experience in both the public and private sectors. From 2014-2016, he served as counsel to a prominent select committee in the United States Congress. His previous Capitol Hill experience also includes his time on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.

In 2006, Ronak was part of efforts to help secure Congressional approval for the landmark U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush that same year. He routinely advises Members of Congress on legal and foreign policy issues, particularly pertaining to South Asia. Ronak is a Law & Security Fellow at New America and an Asia 21 Leader at the Asia Society. He serves as General Counsel and Board Director of the Partnership for a Secure America, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington D.C., which promotes bipartisanship on Capitol Hill through its flagship Congressional Partnership Program.  From 2016-2022, Ronak served as Commissioner on D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI).

Ronak also teaches a popular course on U.S. foreign policy toward South Asia at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. From 2013-2017, Ronak was a Fellow at the Belfer Center’s India and South Asia Program at Harvard University and later served as an Associate at the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University.  Ronak is a frequent author, speaker, and commentator on topics about investigations, the U.S. Congress, and the Indian Subcontinent. He is a regular contributor to Forbes and publications in the Asia-Pacific. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The National Law Journal, The Hill, Foreign Policy, and The Huffington Post, among others. Ronak earned his undergraduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa, and concurrent public policy and law degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School from which he graduated magna cum laude and received the Dean’s Scholar Prize.