In the 27 years since, Gerger has become arguably the most successful white-collar criminal defense lawyer in Texas and the go-to lawyer for corporate executives who find themselves in deep trouble with the government. He defended Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, BP Macondo site leader Robert Kaluza, Dynegy tax executive Jamie Olis and scores of other high-profile clients.

Three months ago, Gerger and a small team of lawyers left the Houston office of Quinn Emanuel, a highly profitable national litigation law firm, to start their own boutique.

Quinn Emanuel lawyers Samy Khalil and Matt Hennessey joined Gerger in creating Gerger Khalil & Hennessy, which specializes in representing individuals in white-collar criminal cases.

In June, the young firm convinced Ashlee Martin, assistant chief of the criminal fraud section of the U.S. Justice Department and a highly respected federal prosecutor, to join the team as a partner.

“I loved my career as a prosecutor, and David was the only person who could convince me to leave the Justice Department for private practice,” says Martin, who led the Healthcare Fraud Task Force in Texas. “I’ve always wanted to represent real people who are facing the biggest challenge of their life.

“I’ve always wanted to fight for the underdog,” she says.

Even the new law firm’s associate, Jon Liroff, has extraordinary credentials. Before practicing law at Quinn Emanuel, Liroff was director of business intelligence and investigations at Kroll, a global corporate risk management firm.

“These four lawyers are stars,” Gerger says. “What they care about most is their client. ‘No’ is not in their vocabulary.”

While the young lawyers are impressive, there is little doubt that Gerger is the actual star of the show.

“David is brilliant and a great attorney,” says former Halliburton chief financial officer Chris Gaut, who is now the chairman of Houston-based Forum Energy Technologies. “David is different from most big-time litigators. He is not a showman at all. He has an ability to cut through things that are unimportant and get to the heart of the matter.”

Gerger grew up in Houston where his father built a business recycling metals. A 1985 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, he clerked for Judge Jerre Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He did a summer associate stint at Vinson & Elkins in Houston, where partners in the firm’s tax law department convinced him to join their practice.

“No trial lawyer dreams of becoming a tax lawyer,” he says. “But I learned a lot about business and business transactions and I learned how to understand lengthy, highly complex and twisted corporate legal texts.”

After three years at V&E, Gerger joined the Federal Public Defender’s office in Houston, which he says was the best career move of his life.

“Being a public defender meant I was in court just about every day,” he says.

In 1994, Gerger went to work for prominent Houston trial lawyer Mike DeGeurin, who had started the Houston firm decades earlier with the legendary Percy Foreman, who died in 1988. A decade later, Gerger created a small white-collar defense law firm with Shaun Clarke, who is now a partner at Smyser Kaplan & Veselka in Houston.

Quinn Emanuel, which has 650 lawyers nationally and profits per lawyer of more than $1 million, asked Gerger to open its Houston office in 2014. He agreed.

“Quinn Emanuel came after David aggressively and he owed it to himself to accept the firm’s offer,” Clarke says. “But it does not surprise me that David has decided to go on his own again.

“David likes representing individuals, and the economics of large law firms like Quinn Emanuel require businesses and institutions as clients,” Clarke says. “I’m not sure that people recognize what a truly great trial lawyer David is.”

Gerger has nothing bad to say about his old law firm.

“I always wanted to see what it was like to be a partner at a large, world-class law firm,” he says. “They offered and I jumped at it. I had nothing but good experiences at Quinn.

“I just wanted to have my own law firm again,” Gerger says.

Legal industry analysts say that Gerger and his team have experienced tremendous success. For example:

Gerger convinced a federal judge to sentence Fastow, widely viewed as the mastermind behind the $60 billion Enron scandal, to only six years in prison. Legal experts predicted Fastow would likely be behind bars the rest of his life.

Gerger and Clarke represented Kaluza, who was charged with 22 counts of manslaughter and one count of water pollution in relation to the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010. The lawyers convinced federal prosecutors to dismiss the murder charges in 2014. In 2016, a federal jury in New Orleans found Kaluza not guilty of the final environmental criminal charge.

“David has a unique ability to identify inherent injustice and fairness in a situation and is able to articulate it to judges, juries and prosecutors,” says BP assistant general counsel Bill Noble, who hired Gerger to defend Kaluza. “David is smart, hardworking, very gentlemanly, gracious and understanding.

In February 2016, the Obama Administration granted a complete pardon to his client, Houston businessman Khrosrow Afghani, who allegedly violated the U.S. ban on doing business with Iran – charges that Gerger says were improperly made.

“As a criminal defense lawyer, we deal with people whose lives are falling apart,” he says. “When I see my clients, I know it can happen to any of us.”