Kobie Flowers

Kobie Flowers

Washington, DC recognized lawyers icon Recognized in Best Lawyers since 2020
Flowers Keller LLP

1 Best Lawyers award

Awarded Practice Areas

Criminal Defense: General Practice Criminal Defense: White-Collar

Biography

Kobie is, first and foremost, a trial lawyer, with over twenty-five years of courtroom experience. Kobie has litigated cases in federal and state courts throughout the United States and in the military commissions in Guantanamo Bay. He represents clients in high-stakes criminal investigations, civil litigation, internal investigations, and trials. Recognized by his peers for his trial acumen, Kobie teaches the art and science of trial lawyering to other lawyers around the country.

Kobie began his career as a member of the Attorney General’s Honors Program, where he was as a civil rights prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section. There, he specialized in the prosecution of police brutality cases. Kobie never lost a case at the Department of Justice. That is notable because police brutality cases are arguably the hardest to prosecute in the federal criminal law.

Following his time as a federal civil rights prosecutor, Kobie pursued the challenge of defending people against federal prosecutions as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Maryland. In that role, he adeptly represented people accused of federal felonies. He won two-thirds of his trials. That is unusual. When trial was not his client’s expressed interest, Kobie skillfully secured several advantageous pre-verdict results, including case dismissals.

Founding Flowers Keller LLP is the capstone of Kobie’s decades-long commitment to ending Mass Incarceration. From helping people warehoused in California’s prisons in his teens to writing his college honors thesis on ending Mass Incarceration in his twenties to holding law enforcement criminally accountable in his thirties to holding these same people civilly accountable in his forties, Kobie’s commitment to ending Mass Incarceration spans a lifetime.

In the words of another former federal public defender and now Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, “History speaks.” In 2003, Kobie was one of the prosecutors who successfully tried the largest prosecution of federal correctional officers in the history of the Civil Rights Division. By 2023, he spearheaded the settlement of the largest wrongful conviction case in American history. That history of fighting to end Mass Incarceration is what Kobie brings to his advocacy for the wrongly accused and the wrongly convicted.

Flowers Keller LLP

1 Best Lawyers award

Overview

  • French

  • Georgetown University, J.D., graduated 2000
  • Stanford University, B.A., graduated 1994

  • New Jersey, New Jersey State Bar Association
  • Maryland, Maryland State Bar Association
  • District of Columbia, The District of Columbia Bar
  • French
  • New Jersey, New Jersey State Bar Association
  • Maryland, Maryland State Bar Association
  • District of Columbia, The District of Columbia Bar
  • Georgetown University, J.D., graduated 2000
  • Stanford University, B.A., graduated 1994

Client Testimonials

Awards & Focus

Recognized in The Best Lawyers in America® 2026 for work in:
  • Criminal Defense: General Practice
  • Criminal Defense: White-Collar
Awards:

Additional Information

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Case History

Cases
  • Civil Rights
  • Represented a female college graduate in her Title IX case against a DC university for mishandling the investigation into her rape by a fellow student.
  • Obtained a court order solving the Special Education No Man’s Land Problem by making the District of Columbia responsible for providing services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to eligible DC residents who are incarcerated in federal facilities outside of DC.
  • Obtained a court order forcing Pennsylvania to follow the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act and allow blind people to vote remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Wrongful Convictions & Police Misconduct
  • Represents three men known as the “Harlem Park Three.” At 108 combined years of wrongful conviction, the triple exoneration of the men is the largest wrongful conviction case in American history.
  • Obtained over $13 million from the State of Maryland for five wrongfully convicted men, convincing the Maryland Board of Public Works to make such awards for the first time in 15 years.
  • Represents a man wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years because the Baltimore police coerced a teenage witness to falsely implicate him for the murder.
  • Represents a man wrongfully imprisoned for 30 years because the Baltimore police illegally hid evidence of his innocence.
  • Represents the estate of a man wrongly targeted by the Washington, DC Police and incarcerated due to his mental illness in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
  • Criminal Defense and Investigations
  • Secured release from Guantanamo Bay prison of only child soldier ever prosecuted by the U.S. government in the modern era.
  • Obtained acquittal for tenured microbiology professor charged with two counts of sexual assault.
  • Obtained acquittal for client charged with unlawfully possessing a firearm.
  • Obtained dismissal of a sexual assault charge filed against a world-renowned infectious disease expert.
  • Obtained dismissal of drug trafficking charges against client by obtaining a hung jury and persuading the government to decline to retry the case.
  • Persuaded ethics regulators to dismiss ethics investigation against an elected official.
  • Persuaded federal prosecutors not to bring money laundering and wire fraud charges against a Russian-owned business.
  • Persuaded federal prosecutors not to bring fraud charges against a client and litigated novel 4th Amendment issue, which forced an Office of Inspector General to change its policy.
  • Persuaded state prosecutors to dismiss an assault case against an NFL executive.
  • Persuaded state prosecutors to dismiss a felony burglary charge against a high-profile lawyer.
  • Persuaded an inspector general to terminate investigation of a federal employee allegedly involved in international government contracting fraud.
  • Persuaded federal prosecutors to decline prosecution of a twenty-year veteran of a major law enforcement agency after multi-year and multi-agency federal fraud investigation.
  • Represented client freed by the federal government as part of the historic seven-prisoner swap between Iran and the United States.
  • Other
  • Obtained favorable settlement for trauma surgeon after whistleblower and defamation trial against Louisiana State University.
  • Obtained favorable settlement in representation of stockbroker in a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration against Citigroup.
  • Obtained dismissal of claims filed against three Department of Justice lawyers in lawsuit filed by former DOJ lawyer.
  • Obtained favorable settlement against federal government agency for discriminating against and defaming an employee.

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