Sunil R. Varghese

Of Counsel

Sunil Varghese is Of Counsel at RISM LLC, where he focuses on estate planning and immigration law. He helps individuals and families plan for the future through customized wills, trusts, and incapacity documents, and also advises clients on cross-border and family-based immigration matters. He brings over 15 years of legal and policy experience across government, private practice, and nonprofit leadership.



Before joining RISM LLC, Sunil served as Senior Director of Global Policy at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), where he led the organization’s international and domestic advocacy to improve access to protection for displaced individuals. He previously served as Counsel to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee, advising on immigration legislation and oversight.

Sunil spent more than seven years in leadership, training, and adjudication roles with the Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations Directorate of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), including as Deputy Director of the Newark Asylum Office and as Special Assistant to the Chief of the Asylum Division. Earlier in his career, he was the Asylum Program Attorney at the Human Rights Initiative of North Texas and an associate in the real estate practice at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP.

A member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), Sunil served on AILA’s National Asylum & Refugee Committee from 2021 to 2023. He is also a member of the South Asian Bar Association of DC and a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project.

Sunil earned his law degree and a Certificate in Refugees and Humanitarian Emergencies from Georgetown University Law Center. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Texas at Austin. He is admitted to practice in New York, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.