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Who They Are
Thorn Run Partners (TRP) is a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm founded in 2010 by two former Ogilvy Government Relations lobbyists: Chris Lamond, a Republican and former aide to Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), and Andy Rosenberg, a Democrat and former aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). The firm’s founding premise — a paired Republican and Democratic lobbyist who had worked together at Ogilvy — was the pitch itself: simultaneous access to both parties, sold as bipartisan neutrality.
TRP has grown into one of Washington’s fastest-growing lobbying operations. By 2024, the firm billed $30.05 million across 228 clients, ranking among the top 10 federal lobbying firms by revenue according to POLITICO Influence and Bloomberg Government. In 2025 (partial-year data through January 2026), the firm reached $32.28 million billed across 261 clients.
The firm’s client base is deliberately diversified: healthcare and pharmaceutical companies form the revenue core, with defense/national security, tech/telecom, local government appropriations work, and financial services making up the rest. TRP describes itself as a “boutique” firm that maintains a senior-level staff — its 35 registered lobbyists include many partners with 15–26 years of government experience. Of those 35, 22 (62.9%) are revolvers — former government employees who now lobby their former offices.
Money
TRP’s revenue trajectory tells the growth story: $6.9M (2016) → $10.1M (2017) → $13.3M (2018) → $16.2M (2019) → $17.9M (2020) → $20.2M (2021) → $22.0M (2022) → $28.0M (2023) → $30.1M (2024) → $32.3M (2025). Revenue has nearly quintupled in under a decade. In 2024, TRP billed $30.05M across 228 clients — an average of $132,000 per client annually. The healthcare/pharma practice is the revenue core. The defense practice — built on Greg Lankler’s decade-plus on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee — handles contractors including Anduril Industries ($20B+ in 2026 contract awards alone), General Atomics, RTX Corp, and National Armaments Consortium. TRP is a pure access machine: government contacts converted into private billing.
Client List
Top clients by 2024 billing (from Senate LDA filings via OpenSecrets):
Healthcare / Pharma
| Client | 2024 Billing | What They Lobby |
|---|---|---|
| ASCAP | $440,000 | Music licensing, copyright royalties, compulsory licensing reform |
| Alliance to Save America’s 340B Program | $320,000 | Defense of 340B drug discount program against pharma industry attacks |
| Applied Materials Inc | $280,000 | Semiconductor manufacturing, CHIPS Act implementation |
| American Society/Consultant Pharmacists | $280,000 | Pharmacy benefit manager reform, Medicare Part D |
| Association of Air Medical Services | $240,000 | Air ambulance billing/reimbursement rates |
| Ardelyx Inc | $240,000 | FDA approval, Medicare reimbursement for kidney disease drugs |
| Advent International (ForeScout Technologies) | $200,000 | Cybersecurity, defense electronics procurement |
| Anduril Industries | $200,000 | Defense tech contracts, autonomous systems procurement |
| Amplifon SpA / Amplifon USA | $200,000 | Hearing aid coverage, Medicare expansion |
| American Seniors Housing Assn | $200,000 | HHS regulations, senior care reimbursement |
| AARP | $160,000 | Medicare, Social Security, prescription drug pricing |
Defense / National Security
Key TRP defense clients cluster around Lankler’s House Appropriations relationships: Anduril Industries ($200K), General Atomics (via Lankler), RTX Corp (Raytheon legacy relationships), National Armaments Consortium, Oshkosh Corp, HTX Labs, Geost Inc, and DARPA grant applicants.
Tech / Telecom
Comcast (multiple lobbyists), Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile USA, Broadcom Inc, NXP Semiconductors, InterDigital Inc, CGI Federal, Astranis, eBay Inc.
Local Government / Municipal
TRP operates an unusually large municipal practice: Greg Burns and James Davenport collectively represent dozens of cities and counties seeking federal appropriations and grants — Broward County FL, Miami-Dade County FL, Los Angeles County CA, Denver Regional Council of Governments, and more. This is a volume practice: low per-client billing, high client count, appropriations earmark work.
Finance / Business
Financial Services Institute, Mortgage Bankers Assn, Encore Capital Group, Jackson National Life Insurance, Prudential Financial.
The Revolving Door
TRP’s core value proposition is former-government access. Key revolving door hires:
Greg Lankler — Partner, joined November 2019. Spent 20+ years in the U.S. House of Representatives, including 10+ years as a professional staffer on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee (under Subcommittee Chairman Bill Young, R-FL). Before the Defense Subcommittee, worked for Rep. Bill Young from 1990–2001 as Legislative Director. At TRP, Lankler runs the national security and intelligence community practice. His clients are exactly the contractors whose Pentagon funding he once helped determine: Anduril Industries, General Atomics (General Atomics Aeronautical Systems), RTX Corp, National Armaments Consortium, Oshkosh Corp, HTX Labs, and DARPA-adjacent clients. The time gap between leaving the Defense Subcommittee and lobbying defense contractors is the revolving door in its purest form.
B.G. Wright — Partner, joined January 2021. Served 26 years in U.S. Congress as staff, beginning as a military fellow while completing 22+ years of military service (retired as Colonel). Immediately prior to joining TRP, served as a professional staff member for the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS). At TRP, Wright leverages CJS appropriations relationships for clients seeking federal funding in those domains.
Catherine Finley — Partner. Former Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging under Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-OR). At TRP, lobbies healthcare clients: AARP, AmeriHealth Caritas, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Huntington’s Disease Society of America, National Assn for Behavioral Healthcare. The Senate Aging Committee sets policy on elder care and Medicare — her former committee’s jurisdiction is now her client service area.
Stuart Chapman — Partner. Former Chief of Staff for Rep. Zack Space (D-OH) (Blue Dog Democrat); also served as press secretary in Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-WV) office. At TRP, lobbies Comcast, T-Mobile, National Football League, healthcare associations, and the Independent Restaurant Coalition.
Chris Lamond (Founding Partner) — Former aide to Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN); previously at Ogilvy Government Relations and The Federalist Group (an all-Republican lobbying shop). Provides Republican Senate/House access for clients including Coalition for Adult Beverage Alternatives, Encore Capital Group, Institute for Progress, Meta subsidiary clients.
Andy Rosenberg (Founding Partner) — Former aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA); previously at Ogilvy Government Relations and Patton Boggs. Provides Democratic Senate/House access for clients including GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim, Medical Device Manufacturers Assn, National Home Infusion Assn.
Hayden Jewett — Partner, joined 2025. Former aide to Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX) and Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) (House Appropriations member). Focuses on tax, tech, energy, and supply chain policy. Hired explicitly to expand TRP’s Republican House access following the 2024 elections.
Louis Sola — Partner, joined August 2025. Former Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission — the independent agency overseeing more than $5 trillion in annual U.S. oceanborne trade. Sola was a Trump appointee to the FMC in 2018, reappointed by Biden in 2024, then named Chairman by Trump in 2025 before stepping down in June after his term expired. He served under three presidential administrations across six years. Before government, Sola founded Evermarine, a luxury mega-yacht brokerage firm. At TRP, Sola provides shipping industry clients with direct access to the regulatory body that governs their business — the same agency he ran months earlier. His policy specializations at the FMC — cruise operations (Fact Finding 30 during COVID), LNG port development, supply chain resilience, and international shipping transparency — are now his lobbying portfolio.
Mary Thien Hoang — Partner, joined January 2026. Former Chief of Staff of the Federal Maritime Commission, where she served 20+ years and five chairmen (Cordero, Khouri, Maffei, Sola, and Carmel). Hoang started as a trial attorney in the FMC’s Bureau of Enforcement in 2005, was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2015, and rose to become the longest-serving Chief of Staff in the agency’s history. She holds degrees from Villanova University, Widener University School of Law, and the Harvard Kennedy School. At TRP, Hoang follows her former boss Sola — within six months, TRP hired both the FMC Chairman and the FMC Chief of Staff, giving the firm more institutional knowledge of federal maritime regulation than any other lobbying shop in Washington.
Money
The Sola-Hoang dual hire is the maritime equivalent of hiring the Pentagon’s Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff in the same year. The FMC regulates ocean carrier rates, terminal operations, cruise lines, and freight logistics — an industry worth trillions annually that was the center of the 2021-2022 supply chain crisis and the subsequent Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022. TRP now has the man who chaired the FMC during OSRA implementation and the woman who ran the agency’s daily operations for two decades. Any shipping company, port authority, or ocean carrier that needs FMC regulatory guidance now has a single firm that can provide it — staffed by the people who wrote the rules. The revolving door doesn’t get more efficient than this.
Contradiction
TRP markets itself as a “bipartisan” firm where clients get “both sides of the aisle.” The contradiction: there are no sides. The same firm lobbies Comcast, GSK, Anduril, and dozens of pharma companies before the same Congress. The bipartisan model doesn’t mean clients get competing advocacy — it means TRP can lobby whichever party controls which committee at any given moment. When control shifts, TRP keeps billing. The clients don’t care who runs the committee; they care about the outcome. TRP sells certainty across political change.
What They Deliver
340B Drug Discount Program Defense: TRP’s client Alliance to Save America’s 340B Program pays $320,000/year to protect the 340B program — a federal drug discount program that allows safety-net hospitals and clinics to buy drugs at reduced prices. Major pharmaceutical manufacturers have spent years attempting to restrict or eliminate 340B; TRP lobbies the relevant committees (HELP, Finance, Energy & Commerce) on behalf of the hospitals and pharmacies that depend on the discounts.
Defense Appropriations Access: Lankler’s prior decade on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee is the direct lineage. His clients — Anduril, General Atomics, RTX — are defense contractors dependent on annual Pentagon appropriations. In March 2026, the U.S. Army awarded Anduril Industries a 10-year contract worth up to $20 billion to consolidate procurement of commercial IT platforms, counter-drone capabilities, and autonomous systems. Separately, Anduril won a potential $642.2 million Navy contract for counter-small UAS installations at Marine Corps bases worldwide. TRP has lobbied for Anduril since at least 2022 — the lobbying spend-to-contract ratio is staggering.
Rockingstone Group Healthcare Alliance (2018): TRP formed a strategic partnership with the Rockingstone Group, a healthcare consulting firm founded by Jordanna Davis — a former health policy staffer to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) who helped draft the Affordable Care Act. The alliance links TRP’s lobbying access with Rockingstone’s ACA implementation expertise. This extends the revolving door from legislative access into regulatory design: TRP lobbies the committees while Rockingstone provides the policy architecture that shapes what those committees produce.
ASCAP Copyright/Music Licensing: ASCAP ($440,000 in 2024 — TRP’s single largest client) lobbies on music performance royalties, compulsory licensing reform, and digital streaming rates. Copyright and licensing rate disputes are adjudicated partly through Congress (via the Music Modernization Act implementation) and partly through the Copyright Royalty Board. TRP provides ASCAP ongoing legislative access.
Maritime & Shipping Regulatory Access (2025–2026): TRP’s hiring of FMC Chairman Louis Sola (August 2025) and FMC Chief of Staff Mary Thien Hoang (January 2026) created an instant maritime regulatory practice. The Federal Maritime Commission regulates ocean common carriers, marine terminal operators, and ocean transportation intermediaries — the entire supply chain from foreign port to U.S. warehouse. Sola led the FMC during implementation of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 (the most significant update to U.S. shipping law in decades), and Hoang managed the agency’s enforcement and administrative operations for 20 years. TRP can now offer shipping industry clients regulatory intelligence from the people who built the current regulatory framework — a practice area that didn’t exist at the firm 12 months ago.
Semiconductor Manufacturing / CHIPS Act: Applied Materials ($280,000) and Broadcom are among TRP’s tech manufacturing clients. Applied Materials is a major semiconductor equipment manufacturer that directly benefits from CHIPS Act grant allocations and export controls. TRP lobbies on CHIPS Act implementation before the Commerce Department and relevant appropriations subcommittees.
Municipal Appropriations Earmarks: TRP’s Burns and Davenport run a high-volume practice representing cities and counties seeking Community Project Funding (earmarks) for infrastructure, water, transit, and public safety. This is largely invisible policy work — no legislative victories, just annual earmark acquisitions for municipal clients at $40,000–$80,000/year.
The Bipartisan Model
TRP was explicitly designed as a bipartisan machine. The model:
- Lamond handles Republican relationships: Senate, House GOP leadership, Republican appropriators. His background in Sen. Thompson’s office and The Federalist Group (all-Republican) gives him GOP credibility.
- Rosenberg handles Democratic relationships: Senate HELP Committee, Democratic appropriators, progressive healthcare networks. His Sen. Kennedy background gives him healthcare-committee depth.
- Specialized practices fill in the gaps: Lankler owns defense regardless of party; Finley owns Senate Aging regardless of party; Wright owns CJS appropriations regardless of party.
The pitch to clients: “We will be effective under any administration, any Congress.” This is not a neutral civic value — it is a hedge. When a lobbying firm can deliver outcomes under both Democrats and Republicans, it is not serving the public interest; it is serving the paying client’s interest regardless of which party ostensibly controls public policy.
Lobbying-to-Policy Timeline
| Date | Recipient/Target | Amount | Policy Return | Time Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022–2026 | House/Senate Armed Services & Appropriations | $200K/yr | Anduril wins $20B Army autonomous systems/counter-drone contract (March 2026) + $642M Navy counter-sUAS contract | ~2–4 years |
| 2022–2024 | Senate HELP, House Energy & Commerce | $320K/yr | 340B program survived Inflation Reduction Act negotiations intact; hospital safety-net discounts preserved | Ongoing |
| 2023–2024 | House Judiciary, Senate HELP (Copyright) | $440K/yr | ASCAP streaming royalty rates defended in Copyright Royalty Board proceedings; MMA implementation lobbying | Ongoing |
| 2022–2024 | Commerce Dept, House Science/Commerce Appropriations | $280K/yr | Applied Materials positioned for CHIPS Act semiconductor equipment grants; export control shaping | ~1–2 years |
| Aug 2025 | FMC / shipping industry | Sola hire (~$400K+ value) | FMC Chairman joins TRP 2 months after leaving agency — instant maritime regulatory practice | 2 months |
| Jan 2026 | FMC / shipping industry | Hoang hire (~$300K+ value) | FMC Chief of Staff (20+ years, 5 chairmen) follows Sola to TRP — completes FMC revolving door capture | 6 months after Sola |
| 2021–2024 | House/Senate Appropriations (CJS, Interior) | $40–80K/yr/city | Dozens of city/county earmarks secured through Community Project Funding process annually | Annual cycle |
| 2022–2024 | Senate Finance, House Ways & Means, CMS | $160K/yr | AARP healthcare priorities embedded in Medicare negotiation rules under IRA; Inflation Reduction Act prescription drug provisions | ~2 years |
| 2023–2024 | House Energy & Commerce, FCC | Variable | Comcast telecom regulatory priorities; T-Mobile spectrum and merger integration issues | Ongoing |
| 2021–2024 | Senate HELP, House Education | Variable | Mental health parity enforcement, behavioral health funding (Chapman’s healthcare client bloc) | Ongoing |
Money
TRP billed $30.05M in 2024 across 228 clients. The defense practice — Lankler alone — represents at least $1M+ in annual billings from contractors who depend on Pentagon budget decisions that Lankler spent a decade making from the government side. The Anduril client relationship began years before the $20B Army contract award. That is the ROI calculation lobbying firms never print in their pitch decks: the ratio of lobbying spend to government contract award is often 1,000:1 or higher.
Billing vs. Outcomes
TRP’s healthcare/pharma practice is structured around regulatory defense — keeping beneficial programs (340B) alive, maintaining reimbursement rates, preventing adverse rule changes. This is defensive lobbying: the outcome is absence of harm rather than affirmative policy victory. It is harder to measure but equally valuable to clients.
The defense practice is different: affirmative procurement lobbying. Lankler’s clients are competing for specific contract awards. The outcome is a contract, not a regulatory status quo. The correlation between ongoing lobbying relationships and contract awards — Anduril is the cleanest example — is not proof of direct causation but is exactly the kind of pattern the Donor Map is built to document.
The municipal practice is the most transactional: earmark acquisition. TRP bills cities $40K–$80K annually to navigate the Community Project Funding application process. Cities pay because the grant awards are often 10–100x the lobbying cost.
Class Analysis
Thorn Run Partners is a professional class operation. Its founders and partners are not billionaires; they are former government staffers who commodified the contacts and knowledge acquired in public service. The “product” they sell — access to the people who run committees — was built at taxpayer expense and is now billed to private clients at $200–$400/hour.
The bipartisan model is the ideological packaging. TRP presents itself as a functional, professional firm that “gets things done regardless of politics.” This framing is accurate — and that’s exactly the problem. It normalizes the idea that policy outcomes are purchasable services, that the distinction between public interest and private interest can be dissolved through professional management, and that former public servants are simply resources to be reallocated by the market.
The revolving door at TRP is not an exception — it is the business model. Greg Lankler spent a decade deciding Pentagon budget allocations from inside Congress; he now bills defense contractors to navigate the same process. Catherine Finley spent years as Staff Director of the Senate Aging Committee; she now bills healthcare companies that those same committees regulate. B.G. Wright spent 26 years in Appropriations; he now bills clients who need appropriations. This is not corruption in the criminal sense — it is the legal, routinized version of the same transaction that is far more corrosive because it is normalized, professionalized, and sanctioned.
The class function: TRP exists to make sure that large institutional interests — pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, telecom corporations, financial services firms — never navigate Washington alone. The firms that can’t afford TRP (or Akin Gump, or Brownstein) don’t have access. The firms that can afford TRP get 35 former government employees working their network on their behalf. That asymmetry is not a market failure; it is the market functioning exactly as designed.
Sources
- OpenSecrets: Thorn Run Partners Lobbying Profile 2024 (Tier 1)
- OpenSecrets: Thorn Run Partners Lobbyists 2024 — 22 of 35 revolvers (62.9%) (Tier 1)
- OpenSecrets: Thorn Run Partners Lobbying Profile 2025 (Tier 1)
- OpenSecrets: Revolving Door — Thorn Run Partners employer search (Tier 1)
- Roll Call: Ex-Ogilvy Lobbyists Launch Thorn Run Partners (January 5, 2010) (Tier 2)
- Thorn Run Partners: Veteran Defense Lobbyist Greg Lankler Joins Thorn Run Partners (Tier 3)
- Thorn Run Partners: Long-serving Appropriations Staffer, Retired Army Colonel B.G. Wright Joins Thorn Run Partners (Tier 3)
- Thorn Run Partners: Stuart Chapman Joins Thorn Run Partners (Tier 3)
- Thorn Run Partners: Ranks Among Nation’s Top 10 Lobbying Firms (Tier 3)
- Thorn Run Partners: Our Team (Tier 3)
- Thorn Run Partners: Rockingstone Group Strategic Partnership (Jan 2018) (Tier 3)
- DefenseScoop: Army awards Anduril $20B contract with eye toward counter-drone capabilities (March 2026) (Tier 2)
- GovCon Wire: Anduril Wins $642M Navy Contract for Counter-Drone Tech (Tier 2)
- Senate LDA: Thorn Run Partners lobbying filings (Tier 1)
- Thorn Run Partners: Former Federal Maritime Commissioner Louis Sola As Partner (August 1, 2025) (Tier 3)
- FreightWaves: Former U.S. shipping czar Sola joins D.C. lobby firm (August 1, 2025) (Tier 2)
- FreightWaves: EXCLUSIVE: FMC Chief of Staff Hoang moves to private sector (January 2026) (Tier 2)
- Thorn Run Partners: POLITICO Exclusive — Thorn Run Adds Three New Partners (July 2025) (Tier 3)
- PPAI: PPAI Enhances Lobbying Investment, Hires Leading K Street Firm (November 2024) (Tier 3)
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