Julian received his J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School and his B.A. in Rhetoric and Molecular & Cellular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. Before law school, Julian worked as a policy researcher for federal science agencies, a reporter covering pharmaceutical news, and a policy analyst at an Illinois-based nonprofit focused on prisoner rights and criminal justice reform.

After graduating law school, Julian served as an honors attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he investigated criminal violations of federal antitrust laws. He then joined a plaintiff-side class action firm in Chicago as an antitrust litigator, focusing his practice on representing victims of price- and wage-fixing conspiracies. Prior to joining Kaplan & Grady, Julian clerked for the Hon. Judge April Perry in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.