Nadia Shihata has practiced law in federal, state and international courts since 2004. Prior to founding Shihata & Geddes LLP, Nadia served as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York for over 11 years. While there, she held several senior leadership roles, including most recently serving as Chief of the Office’s Organized Crime and Gangs Section, where she supervised complex racketeering and violent crime investigations and prosecutions. Nadia also previously served as a Deputy Chief of the Office’s Public Integrity Section, supervising public corruption investigations involving bribery, fraud, theft of government funds, and money laundering. As a prosecutor, Nadia also personally led and handled numerous investigations involving civil rights violations, sexual abuse, extortion, public corruption, racketeering, and violent crimes, including murder. Together, Liz and Nadia led the groundbreaking investigation and prosecution of R&B musician Robert Sylvester Kelly, also known as “R Kelly,” who was convicted after a six-week trial in the Eastern District of New York of racketeering and related offenses and sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment. This was the first time Kelly was held criminally accountable for his conduct after decades of allegations and abuse. As a prosecutor, Nadia personally tried nine cases to verdict, supervised dozens of criminal trials, and argued multiple appeals before the Second Circuit.

 

Nadia won numerous awards for her work as a federal prosecutor. In 2019, Nadia received the Inspector General’s Collaboration Award from the Department of Justice - Office of Inspector General for her work investigating sexual abuse at the federal Bureau of Prisons. In 2016 and 2018, she received the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation’s Federal Prosecutor of the Year Award. In 2014, Nadia and her investigative team at the Federal Bureau of Investigation received the Federal Executive Board’s Distinguished Teamwork Award for their work on an international cyber fraud investigation. In 2022, the New York office of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations awarded Liz, Nadia and their investigative team the Edward J. Smith Investigation of the Year Award for their investigation of R. Kelly. For several years, Nadia was a Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School where she taught a seminar on federal prosecution.

 

Prior to her work as a federal prosecutor, Nadia served as Appeals Counsel in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, Netherlands, where she represented the prosecution before the Tribunal’s Appeals Chamber on matters involving international criminal and humanitarian law. Nadia was also previously a litigation associate at a large multi-national law firm based in Washington, DC. There, she worked on internal investigations for pharmaceutical industry clients, represented a financial services company in a purported race discrimination class action, counseled a large multinational corporation on anti-harassment policies and training, and represented deaf employees in a lawsuit against the United States Postal Service for failure to provide interpreters at safety meetings, among other matters.  

 

From 2003 to 2004, Nadia served as a law clerk for the Honorable T.S. Ellis, III, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia.