John H. Kester

John H. Kester is a trade attorney focused on aviation, maritime, and rail. He also works on complex regulatory matters related to the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Mr. Kester has participated in litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Federal Maritime Commission and has drafted rulemaking comments before the Surface Transportation Board.

Prior to joining GKG Law, Mr. Kester clerked for a boutique Asia-focused intellectual property firm.

Before practicing law, Mr. Kester reported financial news for The Wall Street Journal from its New York headquarters, producing more than 100 stories for print and online. Working for CFO Journal, a special section of WSJ, he scoured SEC documents for information companies would prefer remained unnoticed.

Mr. Kester returned to his hometown of Washington, D.C. and began reporting breaking international and defense news for Foreign Policy, including a story about a surge in IED casualties in Afghanistan that drew from official-use Pentagon documents. He later worked for Foreign Policy’s in-house research firm, FP Analytics, where he focused on projects for Booz Allen and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). As part of a months-long examination of foreign countries preparing their social programs for increasingly older populations, Mr. Kester traveled to Mauritius to investigate and to interview government officials and NGO workers.

Mr. Kester’s writing has been published by Foreign Policy, Washingtonian, and The Wall Street Journal, including an article cited by Harvard Business Law Review and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services. Mr. Kester has been an invited speaker at various organizations including the Washington European Society.

He received a juris doctor from Georgetown University Law Center and a Certificate in Transnational Legal Studies from the Center for Transnational Legal Studies in London in 2013. Additionally, he examined international law with a Cornell University program in Paris.

He has worked and studied in London, Paris, and Tokyo, and has visited nearly fifty countries on five continents.