Matthew E. Kelley

Of Counsel He / Him / His

Washington, DC

Tel 202.508.1112
Fax 202.661.2299

Phoenix

Tel 202.508.1112
Fax 602.798.5595

Matthew E. Kelley advises and represents media companies, journalists, filmmakers, bloggers, and other content creators in a wide range of legal issues. His experience in state and federal courts across the country includes defending clients against defamation, privacy, and copyright claims; litigating Freedom of Information Act and other access matters; challenging subpoenas for privileged information; and other issues implicating First Amendment rights. Matt also counsels clients on legal issues involving newsgathering and intellectual property.

Before beginning his legal career, Matt was an award-winning investigative reporter for the Associated Press and USA Today. As a journalist, he covered a variety of issues and institutions, including Congress, the Pentagon, and national politics.

Matt previously was with the highly regarded First Amendment boutique law firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, which merged with Ballard Spahr in October 2017.

Services

Experience

Representative Matters

Matt worked on legal teams that:

Successfully defended Netflix in a defamation lawsuit brought by a former law enforcement officer over his portrayal in the hit documentary series Making a Murderer. The district court granted Netflix summary judgment, agreeing that the documentary’s editing to condense his trial testimony did not create a false impression and holding that the officer had not provided any evidence that Netflix suspected its portrayal of him was false.
Successfully represented a former Arizona state legislator in winning dismissal of defamation claims by three other Arizona elected officials. The former legislator had joined other lawmakers in writing to federal authorities asking them to investigate the three officials’ role in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, a request for investigation that the court held was absolutely privileged from defamation liability. The court also awarded the legislator her attorney’s fees, holding that the lawsuit was frivolous and brought for an improper purpose.
Won dismissal of a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League by an extremist political candidate who claimed an ADL report about his campaign defamed him. The candidate claimed ADL defamed him by referring to him as a white supremacist and member of a Ku Klux Klan group, claiming that he was only an “honorary” member of the KKK. The district court dismissed the candidate’s claims, ruling that he could not show the publication was false.

Successfully defended Politico and its reporter from a defamation claim by a former Trump White House official who asserted an article falsely attributed anti-Muslim statements to her that were actually made by her partner in a conservative think tank. The Virginia Court of Appeals dismissed the former official’s appeals of the trial court’s dismissal.
Won release under the Freedom of Information Act of an internal Indian Health Service report detailing the bureaucratic misconduct that allowed an IHS doctor to sexually abuse children over a period of decades. IHS had refused to release the report to the Wall Street Journal, whose investigative reporting about the doctor helped prompt the agency to commission the report. Matt argued for the Journal and The New York Times at the Second Circuit, which unanimously affirmed the newspapers’ district court victory a week later.
Successfully defended CBS in a lawsuit brought by the then-Lieutenant Governor of Virginia who claimed he was defamed by broadcasts of interviews with two women who accused him of sexual assault. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the case.
Successfully defended the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times in a defamation action filed by a Russian-born security researcher whose encounter with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was the subject of news articles in several national news outlets. The district court granted the news organizations’ motion to dismiss, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed.
Won dismissal in federal court in Oregon of a defamation claim against the National Congress of American Indians and Indian Country Today by the former chief counsel of NCAI over articles discussing allegations of sexual harassment against him.
Fought on behalf of the Washington Post for the release of records under the Freedom of Information Act from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The records, which the newspaper dubbed the “Afghanistan Papers,” formed the basis of an award-winning series of articles about the United States’ failures in its longest foreign war.
Successfully defended The New York Times in an action brought by a prominent cancer researcher who headed a department at a major university and who claimed that a news report about alleged problems with research papers he authored or co-authored defamed him. The district court granted The Times’s motion to dismiss the Complaint and the Sixth Circuit affirmed.
Persuaded a Virginia court to quash a subpoena to a Roanoke television station seeking unaired portions of an interview with a sexual assault victim. The court held Virginia’s journalist’s privilege shielded the station from the attempt by the former law enforcement officer charged with the assault to obtain the video.
Obtained a declaratory judgment for the Electronic Frontier Foundation under the SPEECH Act, a federal statute enacted in 2010 to combat "libel tourism." The United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that an Australian injunction attempting to censor EFF for publishing a "Stupid Patent of the Month" article is repugnant to U.S. law and public policy and is therefore unenforceable.
Successfully defended producers of a documentary about gun violence from defamation claims by a gun-rights advocacy group and two of its members who were interviewed for the film. A federal trial court dismissed the complaint in Virginia Citizens Defense League v. Couric, holding that the challenged scene was neither false nor defamatory.
In Broker’s Choice of America, Inc. v. NBCUniversal, Inc., successfully represented the network in federal court and at the 10th Circuit in a defamation action involving a hidden-camera report on the plaintiffs’ sales seminars for insurance agents. The 10th Circuit affirmed the trial court’s ruling that the undercover recordings of the seminar showed that the gist of the report—that the plaintiffs taught insurance agents to use scare tactics to sell potentially inappropriate financial products to the elderly—was substantially true.
Working pro bono, persuaded law enforcement authorities in North Dakota to release cameras and equipment seized from visual journalists who were arrested on misdemeanor charges while covering the clearing of protest camps at the site of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Successfully sued the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to obtain documents sought by a scholar researching tribal governments’ laws regarding freedom of expression and access to information. Matt filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., after the Bureau initially ignored the researcher’s Freedom of Information Act request and then claimed it did not have any such documents. The BIA ultimately produced 11,000 pages of records, including nearly 700 constitutional documents for more than three-quarters of the 567 federally recognized tribal governments, and agreed to pay a significant portion of the legal fees incurred in bringing the action.
Represented Twitter in opposing a petition for pre-lawsuit discovery of an anonymous Twitter user brought by nutritional supplement and multilevel marketing firm Herbalife, which alleged that the user’s tweets were defamatory. The court held that Herbalife did not have a viable defamation claim because the tweets were “hyperbolic and dramatic” expressions of opinion and based on truthful disclosed facts.
In Leach v. James, successfully represented ESPN before Texas trial and appellate courts in a high-profile suit filed by former Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach, currently the head football coach at Washington State. The defamation, tortious interference, and civil conspiracy case against ESPN arose from its reporting about allegations that Leach had mistreated a student-athlete and claims that ESPN was responsible for Leach’s subsequent termination from Texas Tech. After the trial court granted summary judgment to ESPN on all claims and Leach appealed the dismissal of his tortious inference claim, the court of appeals affirmed the lower court’s decision.
Successfully defended a CBS television station in Jacobson v. CBS Broadcasting Inc. before the trial and appellate courts against defamation and invasion of privacy claims asserted by a former reporter for a competing station, arising from a CBS report that raised questions about the reporter’s presence at the home of a central figure in a criminal investigation. The appellate court affirmed the grant of summary judgment for CBS on the grounds that the reporter was a public figure who had failed to establish actual malice and that she had no reasonable expectation of privacy while in her source’s backyard.
Defended former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Slate.com in a defamation action filed by a former insurance executive arising out of a piece of commentary by Gov. Spitzer regarding a series of criminal prosecutions he had initiated while attorney general. In Gilman v. Spitzer, the district court granted the defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, and dismissal of the action was affirmed on appeal.
Successfully defended Communications Daily against defamation and misappropriation of trade secrets claims over a report that raised questions about the plaintiffs’ telecommunications license preparation services. The plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their lawsuit, Smartcomm, LLC v. Warren Communications News, Inc., prior to deposition discovery in the case.

Professional Highlights

Professional Activities

ABA Forum on Communications Law

Native American Journalists Association

UNITY: Journalists of Color, past Secretary

Recognition & Accomplishments

Chambers USA, Media and Entertainment (District of Columbia), 2024; "Associate to Watch," 2022, 2023

Legal 500, Media and Entertainment Law: Litigation, 2023, 2024

The Best Lawyers in America "Ones to Watch," - Intellectual Property Law (Washington, D.C.), 2024

Publications

Co-author, "D.C. Federal Court Vindicates Key Arguments for Quashing Subpoenas to the Media in Associated Press Case," MLRC MediaLawLetter, December 2021

Co-author, "Recent Developments in Media, Privacy, Defamation, and Advertising Law," ABA Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Law Journal, Spring 2019

"Results Removed: Fighting Deindexing Abuse," The Current: The Journal of PLI Press, Summer 2017

Related Insights

Credentials

Education

George Washington University Law School (J.D. 2012, with high honors)
Articles Editor, The George Washington Law Review
Order of the Coif

Kent State University (B.A. Journalism 1991, summa cum laude)
Editor, Daily Kent Stater

Admissions

Arizona

Virginia

District of Columbia