James Petkun is START’s Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel. Petkun serves on the company’s executive team and oversees all legal matters globally, including corporate governance, strategic transactions, data privacy and cybersecurity, intellectual property, compliance, regulatory, labor and employment, litigation, and enterprise risk management. He also serves as START’s Corporate Secretary, advising and supporting the Board of Directors. He joined START from Sun Pharma (NSE: SUNPHARMA), a multinational life sciences and pharmaceutical company with $6B in annual revenue, a market cap of $52B, and 40,000+ employees, where he served as Head of Legal Affairs, responsible for advising Sun and its global subsidiaries across the full set of legal functions.

Prior to joining Sun, Petkun was a partner at Klehr Harrison LLP, and counsel at Reed Smith LLP, both in Philadelphia. Earlier in his career, he was a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, serving for eight years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the District of Columbia and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Petkun first-chaired 60+ trials to verdict with the DOJ, including over 25 jury trials, and briefed over a dozen appeals, arguing five – two before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and three before the D.C. Court of Appeals. Previously, he served as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and was an associate at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

Petkun earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Emory University and a law degree, magna cum laude, from Villanova University School of Law. He received an executive certificate in cybersecurity risk management from Harvard University in 2020.