About David G.
David G. Ellen combined elite academic credentials with steady advancement through public and private legal roles. He earned a B.A. from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a master’s degree from Cambridge University in England. Those years of study abroad and at home shaped a lawyer comfortable in regulatory and corporate settings.
Ellen's public service began at the Federal Communications Commission, where he served as Special Counsel in 1995. He moved into private practice and in-house roles soon after, becoming Counsel at Cablevision Systems Corp. in 1997. He took on the role of General Counsel at Eureka Broadband Corp. in 2000 and became Deputy General Counsel at IAC in 2001. Over the following decade he returned to Cablevision in a corporate leadership capacity and in 2013 was listed as Secretary of Cablevision. He later joined Charter Communications and by 2016 was serving as Senior Executive Vice President. The sequence traces a career that crossed regulator and operator lines.
The arc of Ellen’s work shows steady movement into leadership positions that intersect law, policy and business. His time at the FCC gave him direct exposure to federal communications regulation. His subsequent in-house roles involved corporate governance, transactional work and regulatory matters tied to media and broadband. He has handled contracts, compliance issues and board-level legal responsibilities. His background places him at the junction of legal counsel and corporate strategy, where legal advice must align with business realities.
Ellen is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, where he has been a member of the D.C. Bar since 1994. He is also a member of the Connecticut bar, admitted in 2017. Those admissions reflect the geographic span of his professional life and allow him to work on matters governed by both state and federal law. He has moved between litigation-adjacent and corporate legal roles, keeping both strands of practice present in his work.
Across positions in government and large communications companies, Ellen developed a practice centered on the legal needs of media, broadband and related businesses. He has advised on regulatory compliance, corporate governance and transactional matters. He continues to work on corporate and regulatory legal issues for companies in the communications and media industries.
