The Team

Non-Profit/Faith-Based Experience:

As the founding president, CEO, and general counsel, Sears established and built Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF and ADF International), now the largest, and highly successful, religious liberties legal firm in the world. In 2018, Empirical SCOTUS ranked the charity as the number one, most successful of all law firms in the United States practicing before the Supreme Court of the United States during a five-year period. 

 “ADF’s undefeated record at the Supreme Court in the last five years is unmatched by any other litigant that has argued at least four cases, according to an analysis by Empirical SCOTUS. ADF has argued nine times before the high court in the last seven years and won every time, including twice last year.”

Leading all strategic initiatives from 1993-2017, Sears gives all credit to God for the religious liberty achievements under his leadership, citing the charity’s “theme verse” John 15:5, “Without Christ we can do nothing,” to anyone listening. 

Sears has founded several other successful organizations, ministries, and apostolates, and has served many other legal, faith-based, and charitable entities in various capacities. This includes 17 years of volunteer board service for faith-based schools and funding organizations that provide school choice for thousands of elementary and high school students. In the secular realm, he has served on numerous boards ranging from support for those with cerebral palsy to neighborhood associations and private clubs. 

Legal and legislative Experience:

His forty plus years legal career has spanned private, charitable, and governmental service including tenure in the U.S. Departments of Justice and Interior during the Reagan Administration, and the Department of Justice during the Bush Administration. He has litigated numerous complex criminal and civil cases and argued 21 cases before the federal circuit courts of appeal, never losing an appeal of any case he tried below. 

He has helped fashion the policy language for numerous state and federal laws and has testified before committees of the U.S. House and Senate, many state legislatures, and various local governments and commissions.  Legislators in 20 states have adopted his policy recommendations.  Sears has also assisted legislators and law enforcement officials from many countries and has addressed committees of the British Parliament and the Vatican.

Speaking and Media Experience:

Sears’ media appearances include television interviews and features on The Today Show, Nightline, CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, The O’Reilly Factor, Oprah, and Lou Dobbs Tonight. He has been a guest on hundreds of radio programs, including The Laura Ingraham Show, National Public Radio, The Hugh Hewitt Show, The Dennis Prager Show, and more than 30 appearances on Focus on the Family.  He has been profiled extensively by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Washington Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Arizona Republic, and National Catholic Register.  Sears has co-authored several books, most recently, The Soul of an American President: The Untold Story of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Faith, (co-authored with Craig Osten).

He has spoken before hundreds of audiences from living rooms to convention halls across the United States, from Alaska and Hawaii to New Hampshire and Florida, and in international venues including Austria, Canada, England, Greece, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey. 

Education:

A graduate of the University of Kentucky, the Brandeis School of Law, Sears continued his education with professional instruction at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Pepperdine University, and The Catholic University of America.

Though Kingdom Alliance Builders does not offer legal services, Sears exceeds Continuing Legal Education standards and remains in good standing with the American, Arizona, California, District of Columbia (inactive), and Kentucky Bar Associations.

Alliance Building/Recognition:

Sure and certain in his faith, which is anchored on his life theme verse of John 15:5, Alan Sears has excelled in his alliance-building efforts over the past decade across inter-faith and across denominational lines. As a result of his efforts to advance religious liberty and to “make stars of others”, he has received recognition and honors from various legal entities, Catholic, Evangelical, traditional Protestant, and other denominations, faith leaders, organizations, and an international Jewish entity hosted him for Holocaust Remembrance pilgrimages.

Honors awarded to Alan, which in all possible cases were accepted by him in the name of the Team with whom he was serving, include Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention’s John Leland Religious Liberty Award, the Legatus International Courage in the Marketplace Award, the National Religious Broadcasters Faith & Freedom Award. He also received the William Wilberforce Award from The Colson Center, the Edwin Meese III Originalism and Religious Liberty Award, and with his wife, Paula was invested in the Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great as Knight and Dame per Pope Francis, the highest award given by the Holy See to laypersons. 

References:  SCOTUSblog 9.13.18; National Law Journal 12.31.18

Please see FAQs for additional information on Alan Sears.