Kathleen McGuigan

Executive Vice President and Deputy General Counsel

Kathleen McGuigan is RILA’s Executive Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. McGuigan supports the Retail Litigation Center advocating on behalf of the retail industry by filing amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, federal and state courts. She also leads RILA’s deputy general counsel level committee, which provides innovative and quality education on a wide range of issues, including class action and employment litigation trends, privacy, and regulatory compliance, to senior level retail in-house counsel. In addition, McGuigan manages RILA’s compliance offerings and heads up RILA’s Compliance Council (comprised of chief compliance and ethics officers), Finance Leaders Counsel (companies’ chief finance officers, chief accounting officers and controllers), and Internal Audit Committee (senior internal audit executives) and has oversight over RILA’s Consumer Product Committee. 

Prior to joining RILA, McGuigan was in-house counsel for JCPenney where she was the lead attorney for the company’s international operations and handled trade, customs, contract, FCPA, antitrust, regulatory compliance, and corporate social responsibility matters. McGuigan started her legal career as a federal government attorney working for the Office of International Law, U.S. Department of Transportation; Civil Division, Department of Justice; and Office of Chief Counsel, US Customs Service. 

McGuigan graduated from the University of San Francisco with a BA in History and minors in Business and English. She has her JD from Loyola Law School, Loyola and Marymount University and an LLM in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown University Law School.