Debra Van Alstyne | Securities Attorney

Debra Van Alstyne received her Juris Doctor degree from the UCLA School of Law. She graduated in the top 10% of her class and is a member of the Order of the Coif. She served as a Comment Editor of the UCLA Law Review, where she published a Comment, Environmental Decision Making Under CEQA. Before attending law school, Debra graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a B.S. degree in Biological Sciences. After law school, Debra served as the sole law clerk for the Honorable Harry Pregerson in the U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Debra is a member of the State Bar of California and the District of Columbia Bar.

After completing her federal court clerkship, Debra became a lawyer in private practice in Los Angeles. She practiced with and became a partner of Hufstedler Miller Carlson & Beardsley and then McKenna Conner and Cuneo (now McKenna Long and Aldridge), where she first handled litigation matters and then corporate, real estate and securities matters. She then became "of counsel" to Sachs and Phelps, where she continued her corporate and securities practice, with a particular emphasis on private placements of real estate securities.

Upon moving to the Washington DC area, Debra joined the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission, where she served as Senior Counsel for nearly four years and was responsible for reviewing the publicly filed securities documents of existing and newly public companies. After leaving the Securities and Exchange Commission, she became Deputy General Counsel for HealthCare Financial Partners, a newly public company in Chevy Chase, Maryland that provided secured receivables financing (primarily Medicare and Medicaid receivables), real estate financing, and debtor-in-possession financing for companies operating in the healthcare industry.

Debra then joined Fannie Mae in Washington, DC as an Associate General Counsel. At Fannie Mae, Debra was responsible for the preparation and continuous revision of the securities disclosure documents for the company's single-family and multifamily mortgage-backed securities. Debra also managed the ongoing legal aspects of the mortgage-backed securities program. Debra spent a large portion of her time working with securities that were backed by multifamily properties located throughout the United States.

Debra was an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law School from 2007 through 2012, co-teaching a class on "Disclosure Under the Federal Securities Laws" in the Securities Law LLM program. From 2015 to 2018, Debra served on the Board of Directors of Shepherd's Table in Silver Spring, Maryland, a non-profit organization that provides daily meals to those in need.

Debra M. Van Alstyne

Professional Background

Work With Weintraub Law Group

Practice areas