David Yost

David Yost serves as senior counsel and vice president of policy innovation at Alliance Defending Freedom. In this role, he focuses on expanding ADF’s strategic research capabilities and developing innovative approaches to advancing freedom globally, building on ADF’s record of sustained legal excellence and growing impact across the country and around the world.

Prior to joining ADF, Yost served as Ohio’s 51st attorney general for seven years, leading one of the most active and consequential state AG offices in the nation. During his two terms as attorney general, he became known for his fierce advocacy of First Amendment freedoms and parental rights, in court and in the public square. He steadfastly argued for federalism—the doctrine that the federal government has only the limited, listed powers given to it by the people—and for the rule of law.

Yost also served two terms as the auditor of state, rooting out corruption, helping convict 170 people for misdeeds in office, and identifying hundreds of millions of dollars in efficiency savings. He practiced law in Delaware County, Ohio and eventually became the elected prosecuting attorney.

He has served as an elder in his church and as a worship leader. He is widely published, from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times and the National Review. He has appeared on national television, including Fox News and CNN. Two of his criminal cases have been the subject of full-length television features, most recently 20/20’s The Secret in the Water (2026) regarding the cold-case murder of Regina Hicks, which resulted in the conviction of her estranged husband. He is the author of Stand: An Ohio Life and is working on a second book, The Corrosive Nature of Power.