Beth Ann Wilkinson is a Washington, D.C. lawyer, and founding partner of Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz, a specialty trial and litigation law firm. Formerly, she was a partner in the New York City-based law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where she worked in the firm's Washington, D.C. office focusing on white collar criminal defense.
Wilkinson is known for successfully arguing for the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. She has also been a critic of unfair administration of the death penalty. In April 2012 she was hired as outside counsel by the Federal Trade Commission to lead an antitrust inquiry into Google.
Wilkinson is a daughter of Judith and Robert Wilkinson of Richland, Washington. Her father is a retired Navy submarine captain and served as the director of the nuclear spent-fuel project in Hanford, Washington. Wilkinson graduated with a B.A. from Princeton University in 1984 and later graduated with a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School.
She joined the United States Army's Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG Corps) after law school, serving at the rank of Captain as an assistant for intelligence and special operations in the office of the Army's general counsel. That office detailed her as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida to assist with the use of classified information in the prosecution of Panamanian military leader Manuel Noriega.
After completing her four-year obligation to the Army, Wilkinson became a full-time Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 1991, prosecuting various kinds of cases including narcotics, white collar offenses, and violent crimes. Among her cases was the first United States prosecution of a bombing of an airliner—the 1994 case against Colombian narcoterrorist Dandeny Muñoz Mosquera, whom she successfully prosecuted for the bombing of an Avianca civilian airliner as well as murder of U.S. citizens and other drug-related crimes.