Joe Keeley

Joe brings considerable experience as senior Congressional counsel to his role with Michael Best Strategies’ federal government relations team. Joe works with his clients to identify legislative needs and solutions and obtain successful outcomes.

Joe leverages strong bipartisan relationships along with more than 15 years of government affairs experience creating, building, and leading public policy initiatives and coalitions for corporations, organizations, and other entities. He has been recognized as a legislative expert on numerous Judiciary and Budget Committee issues. He also has extensive experience in intellectual property, antitrust, privacy, and technology policy issues.

Prior to joining Strategies, Joe served as the Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director for the Senate Budget Committee where he coordinated the Republican response to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and $1.2 billion Inflation Reduction Act. Within this role, he developed advocacy strategies, coordinated federal budget efforts with other Staff Directors, and directly advised Senators on the Senate floor during the four overnight vote-a-ramas.

He previously served as General Counsel and Deputy Staff Director to the Senate Judiciary Committee. In this role he coordinated multiple judicial priorities of Congress and the White House including moving judicial nominees and legislation through the Committee. His legislative responsibilities included copyright and patent legislation, privacy, antitrust, arbitration, litigation funding, and the Communications Decency Act. He negotiated, drafted, and enacted the 2020 intellectual property legislative package, and developed a legislative strategy to end the Section 119 compulsory satellite license.

Earlier, Joe served as Chief Courts & Intellectual Property Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, during which time he focused on patent reform, and copyright law review, and helped enact the Music Modernization Act and the Defend Trade Secrets Act. The Music Modernization Act has already paid out over $1 billion in royalties to songwriters worldwide.