Christina
Baptista

Position: Special Counsel
Office: Washington, DC

Christina Baptista is special counsel in the Litigation Practice Group. She is a member of the compliance and securities team and the privacy, data strategy, and artificial intelligence team.

Christina helps clients prevent, manage, and resolve disputes involving artificial intelligence (AI), data privacy, cybersecurity, and data governance. Her practice pairs compliance counseling with litigation risk assessment. She works closely with businesses to structure AI and data programs that stand up to regulatory and courtroom scrutiny, evaluates the exposure created by new technologies and data practices, and supports litigation teams when privacy, cybersecurity, or AI questions move into contested territory.

Christina joined Jones Walker after nearly 16 years with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), most recently as senior counsel in the department’s Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties and lead privacy counsel to DOJ’s chief AI officer. In that role, she shaped and put into practice the department’s AI governance and compliance program, working to ensure the responsible procurement and use of high-impact AI systems. She sat on the department’s Emerging Technology Board, Responsible AI Council, and AI Inventory Working Group, and was chosen from a field of hundreds of federal privacy practitioners to represent the Federal Privacy Council before the Chief AI Officers Council. For her work establishing the Data Protection Review Court — the tribunal created to satisfy US commitments under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and permit the transfer of European Union (EU) personal data to the United States — Christina received the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award.

Because her government clients ranged from law enforcement components to administrative tribunals, Christina learned to tailor privacy and AI counsel to organizations with sharply different missions, risk profiles, and regulatory obligations. She brings that same adaptability to the private sector, where she addresses the questions businesses now confront as they adopt AI: how to be transparent about AI use, how company and customer data may be incorporated into AI tools, what happens when AI generates new content about real people, and how communities perceive the infrastructure — including data centers — on which these systems depend. Rather than applying bright-line rules across the board, Christina favors case-by-case evaluation grounded in sector-specific laws and each client’s operational reality.

Christina’s DOJ portfolio extended well beyond AI. She led the department’s Data Brokers Working Group and authored its policy on commercially available information, and she advised US attorneys’ offices and other department litigators on privacy issues arising in litigation, on expert witness contracts, and on the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other international privacy laws. Christina also represented US law enforcement interests before the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Global Privacy Assembly. As the department’s lead privacy strategist for procurement, she wrote DOJ-wide privacy contract clauses, enforced privacy and cybersecurity protections in vendor agreements, and advised senior leadership on major cybersecurity incidents. She routinely directed multimillion-dollar breach responses that encompassed negotiations with outside counsel and remediation for affected individuals.

Earlier, Christina spent a decade in the Office of the General Counsel of DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), during which time she served for six years as senior counsel and managing attorney. She directed a legal portfolio that spanned federal court litigation, privacy, records management, audits, contracts, and policy development, acting as the agency’s lead on civil class actions and on mandamus, habeas, Bivens, and Federal Tort Claims Act matters.

Christina addresses privacy, AI governance, and risk management before bar associations, industry groups, and international bodies.

Noteworthy

Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award, US Department of Justice
Director’s Award for Legal Excellence, Executive Office for Immigration Review, US Department of Justice
Certified Information Privacy Professional, United States (CIPP/US), International Association of Privacy Professionals (2023)
Executive Branch AI Lab Certificates, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2023 and 2025)
Held top secret/sensitive compartmented information SCI security clearance during her federal service