Principals & Senior Officers — Hudson Litigation Capital

§ Principals & Senior Officers

The discipline is held by named hands.

Hudson Litigation Capital is governed by a partnership and operated by a small, named bench of senior officers. Each appointment carries a defined institutional role under the firm's founding doctrine.

§ Leadership

Eleanor V. Hudson

Co-Founder & Managing Partner

Eleanor founded Hudson Litigation Capital on the conviction that litigation finance had failed to develop the structural rigour of institutional capital markets — and that the gap was the opportunity. Before HLC, she spent fourteen years at alternative asset management firms focused on legal and regulatory risk, including senior roles in the disputes finance divisions of two global investment platforms. She designed HLC's constitutional governance framework — the 60% probability threshold, the 8% single-matter exposure cap, the 20% Capital Reserve, the SPV bankruptcy-remote structure, and the Non-Interference Doctrine — before a single dollar of capital was committed. As Managing Partner, she holds ultimate authority over the firm's strategic direction, capital doctrine, and institutional relationships. She does not manage individual investments. She manages the architecture that governs them.

Joseph Villalba

Head of Commercial Strategy & Capital Solutions

Joseph leads HLC's commercial strategy architecture and the design of bespoke capital solutions for claimants, law firms, and institutional counterparties. Prior to HLC, he held senior commercial roles at two alternative asset platforms and a leading international arbitration boutique. He is responsible for product structuring, pricing strategy, and counterparty relationships across the firm's four authorised product lines — the Litigation Funding Agreement, Claim Purchase Funding, the Silent Partner facility, and HLCDC counterclaim funding. Joseph's seat is distinct from investor relations — it faces the origination market: identifying where capital can be deployed, how it should be structured, and at what terms.

Dean Jason-Smith

Director of Business Development

Dean leads HLC's inbound and outbound business development across law firms, corporate legal departments, and claimant-side counsel. He is responsible for pipeline origination, professional network development, and first-pass matter assessment before IC screening. Consistent with HLC's mandate, the firm does not act as a referral agent or broker for legal services and does not recommend counsel — Dean's seat is the relationship layer between the market and the Investment Committee, ensuring that matters reaching the IC meet mandate before consuming underwriting resource.

James Hennager

Business Development Manager

James supports HLC's business development function across origination, relationship management, and pipeline coordination. He works directly with Dean Jason-Smith on matter sourcing from law firms and claimant-side counsel, managing the pre-screening workflow and ensuring timely communication across the intake process. James is the operational engine of the BD function — the first point of contact for many incoming inquiries and the continuity layer that keeps relationships active between senior touchpoints.

§ Principal Officers

Nathaniel Forsythe

General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer

Nathaniel advises on the architecture and execution of Litigation Funding Agreements across common law and civil law jurisdictions, with particular focus on champerty analysis in multi-jurisdictional structures, counterparty conflicts management, and enforcement of HLC's Non-Interference Doctrine. He oversees regulatory compliance, attorney-client privilege protocols, and post-funding confidentiality obligations across the active portfolio. He chairs the Conflicts and Compliance Subcommittee and signs every facility before deployment. Columbia Law School, J.D.

Jonathan Adeyemi

Chief Underwriting Officer · Chair, Investment Committee

Jonathan brings experience in structured credit asset management and senior underwriting at a leading European litigation finance platform. He owns the intellectual framework behind HLC's underwriting discipline: the Seriousness Test, the Optimism Discount methodology applied at quantum assessment, and the Enforcement Score (0–5) governing jurisdictional collectability. The Investment Committee's funding authority is final and non-delegable — all capital deployment decisions originate and conclude at this seat. LSE, B.Sc. Economics. Harvard Law School, LL.M.

Serena Castellano-Wright

Director of Portfolio Management & Monitoring

Serena's background is in asset management structured finance, with post-issuance covenant surveillance on CLO and ABS portfolios. At HLC she leads all post-deployment oversight: ongoing covenant tracking against LFA milestones, portfolio watchlist administration where recovery probability has been re-rated, and structured milestone reporting to Purchasers acquiring claims under the firm's Claim Purchase Funding product. Capital does not sit passively at HLC — it is actively stewarded from the moment of commitment. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, M.B.A.

Vivienne Tran-Holloway

Head of Capital Markets & Investor Relations

Vivienne brings experience as a credit analyst and structured products specialist. At HLC she leads the inbound capital interface for family offices, endowments, university foundations, and credit funds evaluating Purchaser positions in HLC's Claim Purchase Funding product. First-pass allocator due diligence, LP communication protocols, and Purchaser governance all sit within this seat — distinct from business development; this is a capital markets function. Georgetown University, B.S. Finance. Kellogg School of Management, M.B.A.

Dimitri Papadakis

Director of Claims Analytics & Enforcement Intelligence

Dimitri built the firm's quantitative underwriting infrastructure from the ground up, including the Enforcement Score methodology — a 0–5 scale applied at underwriting to assess jurisdictional collectability independent of counsel optimism. He brings deep experience in disputes and investigations practice, advising on cross-border asset tracing and award enforcement in U.S., U.K., Dutch, U.A.E., and Singapore proceedings. HLC's differentiating thesis is that legal merit and recoverability are distinct underwriting questions; this seat owns the second one. NYU School of Law, J.D. Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, M.P.A.

§ A Note on Bench Composition

The bench is deliberately small.

HLC does not staff to the size of the market. It staffs to the discipline of the mandate. Each principal officer holds a defined institutional seat — underwriting, compliance, portfolio, capital markets, enforcement — and signs into the record on every matter that touches their authority. The firm grows the bench only when a doctrinal function requires its own named hand. Until then, capital is governed by the officers who already hold it.

A Note on Composition

"The Founder, Bill Hudson, holds the Managing Principal seat and does not appear on the firm's public register. Inquiries directed to the Founder are routed through the General Counsel."

A Note on HLCDC

Hudson Litigation Capital Defense Corp. (HLCDC), the firm's counterclaim funding affiliate, operates under a separate Investment Committee, compliance protocol, and information barrier. The officers listed on this page govern Hudson Litigation Capital. HLCDC's named officers are listed separately at /hlcdc-team.