2 Bedford Row

• Brian Altman was appointed junior Treasury Counsel at the Old Bailey in 1997 and promoted to senior Treasury Counsel in 2002.  In 2008 he was appointed Queen's Counsel.
• He was appointed First Senior Treasury Counsel to the Crown at the Central Criminal Court by the Attorney-General with effect from 1st December 2010.

• He was named by the Times in its Law 100 list as one of the country's 100 most influential lawyers for 2012. He was also listed by the Evening Standard in the law section of the list of London's 1000 most influential people for 2011.

Before his appointment as Treasury Counsel, he defended in large high-profile fraud and other serious criminal cases such as:

• R v Clews (Butte Mining plc fraud regarding the flotation of a plc based upon alleged mining deposits in Butte, Montana, USA)    
• R v Anderson (Brent Walker plc - trial of the finance director)
• R v Varathadasan & others (Tamil Tigers murder)
• R v Donald & Cressey (Police corruption exposed by BBC's Panorama)

As Treasury Counsel Mr Altman has prosecuted and advises in many serious cases involving:

• Murder, manslaughter
• Corporate manslaughter
• Breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974
• Medical manslaughter
• Police misconduct
• War crimes
• Offical secrets and terrorism

Mr Altman advises private clients and corporations on money laundering compliance and regulation, bribery and corruption as well as professional disciplinary and regulatory issues.

He has led for the prosecution in the following high-profile cases:

• R v Naseer, Khalid & Ali (convictions of Birmingham terror bomb plotters at Woolwich Crown Court in February 2013)  

• R v Koc (conviction on two counts of murder and five counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, following a series of motiveless daytime blunt trauma attacks on lone men walking or jogging in North London parks and woodland over the course of a 26 day period in January 2011)

• R v Desuze & Desuze (plea of guilty to the unlawful killing of 68 year old Richard Mannington Bowes during the 2011 summer riots in Ealing by 16 year old Darrell Desuze who punched him hard to the jaw, causing an unprotected fall on to his head, from which he died, in addition to pleas of guilty to violent disorder and to four burglaries during the same night's disturbances, and the later conviction of his mother, Lavinia Desuze, for perverting the course of justice by destroying and disposing of the distinctive articles of clothing her son had been wearing that night)

• R v Bikubi & Bamu (murder of 15 year old Kristy Bamu, and attacks on two others of his siblings, on Christmas Day 2010 in the defendants' east London flat during days of a process of deliverance or exorcism, which was grounded in the belief that the children were practising on another child of the family a form of witchcraft or sorcery, known in the Congo as 'kindoki')

• R v Kanagasingham (killing of well-known immigration and human rights solicitor David (also Sonia) Burgess who was pushed under a tube train at King's Cross in October 2010 by a transsexual defendant convicted of manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility)
• R v Onyenaychi (pre-Christmas 2010 double attempted murder in Ealing of a police constable and a PCSO and associated knife-related offences)
• R v Bellfield (2011 convictions of serial killer Levi Bellfield for the 2002 abduction and murder of Amanda Dowler in Walton-on-Thames and 2008 convictions for the 2003/2004 murders of Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy)
• R v Sweeney (first joint Anglo-Dutch murder investigation funded by 'Eurojust' and conviction of canal murderer John Sweeney who killed and dismembered former American model and photographer, Melissa Halstead, in Holland in 1990, and disposed of her remains in a Rotterdam canal, and Paula Fields in London in 2000, whose dismembered body parts were found in the Regent's Canal in 2001)
• R v Thomas, Alexander & Burke (convictions for manslaughter of Ian Baynham in Trafalgar Square in September 2009 following homophobic abuse)
• R v Collender, Dixon & Ransom (Halloween murder of Ben Gardner)
• R v Elcock, Lyzai & another (deliberately targeted so-called 'happy slapping' assaults and manslaughter of vulnerable men outside Tooting mosque on August 2009 bank holiday Monday)
• R v Johnson (convictions for murder and attempted murder in a pioneering prosecution where the principal attacker deployed his pit-bull/mastiff cross as a weapon to bring down the victims of a gang-related attack following which one was stabbed fatally and the other suffered life-threatening stab injuries. Canine DNA analysis was successfully used to place the dog ('Tyson') and the offender at the scene)
• R v Farley (one punch manslaughter of half-brother of Tottenham and England striker Jermain Defoe where the sole issue was causation involving allegations by the defence of medical negligence)
• R v Lewington (conviction of white supremacist for offences under the Terrorism Acts 2000 & 2006 and under the Explosive Substances Act 1883)
• R v McLean & others ('honeytrap' knife murder of Shakilus Townsend) 
• R v Bishop (knife murder of Harry Potter actor Robert Knox and the wounding of four others in May 2008)
• R v Brown(double missing body murder of a female Chinese DVD seller and a sex worker in the Whitechapel area in August & September 2007)
• R v Gnango (murder of a Polish care worker who was killed in the crossfire of a gunfight between the defendant and another youth, where the defendant had not fired the fatal bullet and the victim had been the unintended target. Having passed through a 5 judge Court of Appeal, in December 2011, the Supreme Court, consisting of 7 justices, overturned the Court of Appeal's judgment by a majority of 6-1, and restored the offender's murder conviction on novel and unique issues of joint enterprise and transferred malice)
• R v Dixie (murder of Sally Anne Bowman)
• R v Harling (murder of nurse in Hornchurch by defendant unsuccessfully claiming his responsibility was diminished by virtue of Asperger's syndrome)
• R v Tucker (shooting dead of young father Peter Woodhams by youth following campaign of intimidation)
• R v Malasi & others (murder of guest at Peckham baby naming party during an armed robbery by several youths)

His past high-profile cases include:

• R v Mulcahy (second offender prosecuted and convicted for the 1980's railway murders; John Duffy who was convicted of the offences in the 1980's gave evidence for the prosecution against Mulcahy)
• R v Suleyman & others (first Damilola Taylor prosecution)
• R v Campbell (missing body murder of Danielle Jones)
• R v Rivas & others (alleged plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham)
• R v Morton (missing body homicide from 1997)