ACG Advocacy

Manus Cooney is a Managing Partner at ACG Advocacy, where he leads a prominent public policy practice focused on in-tellectual property, competition, and justice-system policy. He provides clients with strategic policy planning, execution, and advocacy before federal agencies and Congress.

Before entering client advocacy, Manus held many leadership roles, including serving as Senior Vice President and Policy Counsel at Napster, Inc., where he shaped the company’s public policy and product strategy. 

Manus spent more than a decade on Capitol Hill, including service from 1996-2000 as Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. As principal legal and policy advisor to Chairman Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT), he led the Committee’s legislative, executive, and oversight agendas. 

He serves on the Board of Directors of The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. He has also served on the boards of The Churchill Centre & Churchill Museum and the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation. He is a member of the Federal City Council, the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., the Federalist Society, and the American Intellectual Property Law Association. Sen. John McCain appointed him to the Justice Advisory Committee during the McCain for President campaign. 

For the past 20 years, Manus has served as an advisor to various Irish-American non-profits, including the Chicago Celts, where he was befriended by Billy Lawless and became a member of the Seanad. In 2016, he was invited to speak before the Seanad on the political climate in the U.S., becoming the first American to receive this honor since JFK. Manus was selected as the Grand Marshall of the Washington, D.C. St. Patrick’s Day Parade in 2020.

Manus traces his roots to County Mayo’s Achill Island.  His great-grandparents emigrated to the US in 1888 and planted roots in the coal-mining community of Sugar Notch, Pa.