WASHINGTON — Kashyap Patel is a lawyer who has sometimes run afoul of the rules.

As a lawyer in Florida, Mr. Patel, 37, entered and then dropped out of a charity bachelor auction featuring some colleagues after a blogger pointed out that his license to practice in the state appeared out of date. In 2016, as a counterterrorism prosecutor for the Justice Department, he was berated by a federal judge who then issued an “Order on Ineptitude” directed at the entire agency. And over the summer, in a trip arranged outside official channels, he traveled to London, where he tried unsuccessfully to meet with Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier that purported to details links between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to multiple people with knowledge of the trip.

After less than a year as a Republican staff member on the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Patel has found himself in the middle of another controversy. According to congressional sources, he is the primary author of the politically charged memo, released on Friday by the committee chairman, Representative Devin Nunes, over the opposition of the F.B.I. and the intelligence community, that accuses federal officials of bias against President Trump.

Democrats, led by Representative Adam B. Schiff, the ranking minority member on the committee, were scathing in their criticism of both the report and the decision to release it to the public.

“The President’s decision to publicly release a misleading memo attacking DOJ & FBI is a transparent attempt to discredit these institutions and undermine Mueller’s probe,” Mr. Schiff said on Twitter on Friday, referring to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election.