Connect with Faculty Experts

Professor Laura Avery is a New Orleans attorney with the boutique law firm Kerry Murphy Law whose practice focuses on representing plaintiffs in employment discrimination and wage-related litigation. Prior to joining Kerry Murphy Law, Avery worked for several years as a defense litigation attorney in a variety of practice areas, including labor and employment as well as construction, suretyship, and admiralty and maritime law. She holds a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a JD from Tulane Law School. Prior to law school, Avery worked professionally in the performing arts for approximately ten years and appeared in productions across the United States and in Europe.

Amy B. Bakay, SHRM-SCP, is the owner and principal consultant for HR NOLA, a human resources outsourcing and consulting firm headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is a certified member of SHRM and will serve as 2019 President-Elect on the local chapter’s Board of Directors for NOLA SHRM. She has been nominated as a 2018 Woman of the Year for City Business News and also designated a 2018 Steel Magnolia for New Orleans Magazine. Bakay’s passion is solving people-problems and educating our youth, and she joins other successful women at the American Business Women’s Association in their mission to bring together businesswomen of diverse occupations for opportunities to grow personally and professionally.

Ashley Banks is a Staff Attorney at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Banks works on high-profile and emergency civil motions across numerous areas of law, including labor and employment. She is also a founding member of the Office of Staff Attorneys’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group on Race.

Before joining the court, Banks was a trial attorney with the National Labor Relations Board. Recognized for “Excellence in Litigation,” Banks routinely served as lead counsel on the investigation and litigation of complex unfair labor practice cases; negotiated settlements including reinstatement, rescission of adverse employment actions, and financial payments; and conducted representation elections.

Banks holds an AB from Duke University and a JD cum laude from Tulane University Law School.

This course is created and taught by Professor Paul Barron. Professor Barron has been teaching for 40 years at Tulane law school. Professor Barron has taught commercial courses and created and taught a course of negotiation at the law school for 15 years. He has written articles in these areas, as well as a book and supplements on the topic of federal regulation of real estate.

Professor Barron has also written a law school casebook on Secured transactions He is a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators and on the arbitration panel of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service and the arbitration and mediation panels of the American Arbitration Association. Professor Barron regularly acts as an arbitrator and mediator.

He is a two-time recipient of the Felix Frankfurter Distinguished Teaching Award. During 2000-01 and again in 2006-07, he served as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs for Tulane University. From 2007 to February 2009, he served as Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology Services for the University.

A leader in Louisiana water law and coastal adaptation, Christopher Dalbom came to Tulane Law School as a student in 2009. After graduating from Tulane Law School in 2012, he worked for one year as a postgraduate fellow at the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy before becoming the Institute's Program Manager and, then, Assistant Director. Christopher has done extensive work on legal and policy issues relating to interstate water compacts, comparative water law, Mississippi River management, the RESTORE Act and other revenue streams associated with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and coastal and water management.

Prior to coming to Tulane, Christopher served in the Peace Corps in El Salvador and studied and taught cultural geography in Louisiana and Virginia.

Mark Davis is a Research Professor at Tulane University Law School where serves as Director of both the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy and the Center for Environmental Law. He is also the Eugenie Schwartz Professor of River and Coastal Studies at Tulane’s ByWater Institute, which he also directs.

Prior to coming to the Law School, Mr. Davis served for fourteen years as Executive Director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, a broad-based organization committed to the stewardship of Louisiana's coast. Previous to that, he practiced law in Indiana, Illinois and the District of Columbia for more than a decade.

He is a member of the bar in Indiana, the District of Columbia, Illinois and Louisiana.

Mr. Davis has taught as an adjunct faculty member at the Indiana University School of Business (Indianapolis), IIT Chicago-Kent School of Law and Loyola Law School (New Orleans). He is currently an adjunct instructor at the Tulane University Law School.

Mr. Davis has a BS and JD from Indiana University and an MLT from Georgetown University.

Mr. Davis lives in New Orleans.

Davis spent 14 years as executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, where he helped shape programs and policies at the state and federal level to improve the stewardship of the wetlands and waters of coastal Louisiana. He has practiced law in Indianapolis, the District of Columbia and Chicago and has taught at the Indiana University (Indianapolis) School of Business and the IIT-Chicago Kent School of Law in Chicago.

Gillian Egan is Corporate Counsel with APL Logistics, a premier provider of global supply-chain services, after serving six years as a Human Resources Manager in the manufacturing sector and nine years as a litigator in private practice.

In the mid-2000s, Ms. Egan was the sole Human Resources professional in a manufacturing start-up, and had to create, implement and refine all of the site’s personnel policies and procedures, compensation and benefits packages, safety inspections and certification programs, training plans, payroll procedures, job descriptions, employee relations procedures, and anything and everything else related to the site’s Human Resources and Environmental Safety and Health. This experience ignited Ms. Egan’s interest in employment law, and eventually propelled her into a full scholarship to law school, where she was managing editor of the Tulane Maritime Law Journal, served on the moot court board, won first place in an appellate moot court competition, and externed for The Honorable Sarah S. Vance, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Ms. Egan graduated magna cum laude and was granted the honor of Order of the Coif (issued to the top ten percent of the graduating class), and walked across the graduation stage holding her two oldest sons, the second one born during her law school years.

Ms. Egan practiced management-side employment law for nine years after graduating from law school, with particular focus on OSHA investigations and litigation, wage and hour class and collective actions, and management of large e-discovery initiatives. She has also spent countless pro bono hours assisting unaccompanied minor immigrant children achieve legal resident status in the United States, among other pro bono initiatives.

Ms. Egan lives in uptown New Orleans with her husband and three sons and enjoys cheering on Tulane’s Green Wave and the New Orleans Saints.

Dr. Elizabeth Townsend Gard specializes in Intellectual Property law, including copyright, trademark, and comparative intellectual property; and entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship, solopreneurs, and handcraft-entrepreneurs. She is proud to also teach in the Masters of Jurisprudence program at Tulane University Law School, where she focuses on the intersection of intellectual property within the context of employment law and business practices across the country.

Dr. Townsend Gard's philosophy combines theory and doctrine with immersive practice, both inside and outside of the classrm. For the last decade, she has worked with students to teach them skills needed to be successful in both a law practice as well as in the entrepreneurial world for the 21st century. She has co-written a two-volume casebook, IP: Doctrine and Application in Two Volumes, which reflects her teaching philosophy.

She also strongly believes in mentoring students. To that end, she has worked with over 90 research assistants, and regularly works with students to think through how to make their own road, their own journey in the legal world. She has started a Tulane Law School Podcast, ""Legal Journeys"" which explores just that: alumni experiences on how they got to where they are, and advice for those beginning their legal journey. She has also worked with students on her projects in specialized internships at the Library of Congress, Internet Archive, and the Frick Collection, as well as sending students on research trips to Washington D.C., Paris, New York, Oxford, and Berlin.

Dr. Townsend Gard is the founder of the Tulane Center for IP Law and Culture, where the Copyright Research Lab is housed.

Entrepreneurial Experiences

Dr. Townsend Gard is the co-inventor and director of the Durationator^®, a software system that aims to determine the worldwide copyright status of every kind of cultural work. She also co-owns the Tulane spin-out company, Limited Times, which is commercializing the Durationator^® software and services. Students have worked on this project for more than the decade, both on the copyright and entrepreneurial sides, and will continue to do so as it enters its next phase of development. As part of this project, she has developed a database of the Catalog of Copyright Entries (scanned PDFs from the Internet Archive) to assist in searching the copyright records, 1909-1978. The Durationator over the years has expanded its scope to include fair use, classroom uses, library uses, pre-1972 sound recordings, and moral rights. For more information go to http://www.durationator.com.

Dr. Townsend Gard is also the host of Just Wanna Quilt, a research podcast focused on quilting, entrepreneurship and copyright. Begun in 2018, the podcast has over 300 interviews of quilters, industry, scholars, lawyers, and now, with the onset of COVID-19, over 75 interviewed focused on mask making. The podcast has over 25,000 subscribers, and have had over a half a million downloads in its first three years. There is a corresponding Facebook group, Just Wanna Quilt, with over 3000 members, along with sub-groups. As part of this project, Dr. Townsend Gard has stated a publishing house, with Ricardo Gonzalez, with seven publication in its first year, including Just Wanna Patent, Just Wanna Create: Copyright and Fair Use Strategies, Just Wanna Trademark, and A Little Bit of Copyright, and Just Wanna Quilt Notebook. Just Wanna Quilt now has a spin-out company, Quilting Army Krewe, which will be opening an Etsy Shop ini the Fall 2021 as pat of the entrepreneurial experiment, along with the current virtual bookshop. For more information, go to http://www.justwannaquilt.com.

All of Dr. Townsend Gard's course engage in entrepreneurial activities focused on these projects and more. Other projects in the past include a video game project (that turned into a publication for Routledge), artists and the law project, pre-1972 sound recordings and Hogan Jazz Archive project, Section 512 project, and many more. The goal of the projects is to engage in the act of doing and work with communities that are facing specific legal issues to better understand and train law students.

Dr. Townsend Gard has held a number of fellowships associated with entrepreneurship including stints at Idea Village, Propeller, the Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tulane, and she was a Social Entrepreneurship fellow (the Jill H. and Avram A. Glazer Professor of Entrepreneurship) for five years. She has also been granted research awards from Tulane University, technology transfer, and the Provost to support her entrepreneurial work, along with the Paul Verkuil Faculty Research Fund at Tulane Law School.

She also works and assist with running a New Orleans based LGBTQ+ Generation Z arts collective, Eyeridium, http://www.eyeridium.com, which is a blend of original and fan art, crafts, crochet, quilts, and candles.

Her latest endeavor in the Spring 2020 came with the onset of COVID-19, where she began making masks in mid-March, and by April, had co-founded Million Masks a Day, a resource and Facebook group dedicated to providing resources and information to sewists around the country making masks for frontline workers. (See https://law.tulane.edu/news/law-professor-and-truck-driver-join-make-million-masks-day). As part of this endeavor, she personally made more than 800 masks, donating them to a Tulane pediatric immigration clinic, homeless programs, and a Ninth ward local supermarket, as well as making them for friends and family throughout the Spring. She also was awarded two grants, one from Newcomb Institute and the other from the Taylor Center, to purchase equipment and over 1000 yards of fabric for 7th ward sewists working to make masks. Out of this work came the Homemade Mask Virtual Summit in June 2020, sponsored by the Newcomb Institute, and co-sponsored by the Taylor Center for Innovation and Design Thinking, where scientists and sewists came together over two days and ten hours to discuss the state and science of homemade masks. This included over 55 parenists and 600 sewists, with the outcome an infographic developed to assist in translating information on mask making best practices. Dr. Townsend Gard was one of the lead authors on the infographic.

Academic Experiences

Dr. Townsend Gard earned a Ph.D. in European History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a J.D./LL.M. in International Trade from the University of Arizona, specializing in NAFTA, and the intersection off intellectual property and trade law. She served as a clerk on two NAFTA arbitrations for arbitrator David Gantz. Dr. Townsend Gardjoined the Tulane faculty in 2007. Previously, she taught for one year at Seattle University School of Law as a visiting assistant professor, where she was also a Justice Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Study of Justice in Society. Before that, she taught intellectual property at the London School of Economics, where she held a Leverhulme Trust Research Postdoctoral Fellowship. Since 2004, she has been a non-resident fellow at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.

Dr. Townsend Gard was cited twice by the U.S. Supreme Court in Golan v. Holder (2017) for her work on the Durationator. She has been published in Vanderbilt Law Review, DePaul Law Review, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, the Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., Journal of Internet Law, Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts and Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal. She has written a chapter for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Evolving Economies (Edward Elgar, 2012) and co-authored a piece with Ron Gard in Modernism and Copyright (Oxford University Press, 2010). She is regularly interviewed by newspapers and other media for her expertise on copyright and entrepreneurship, and now even mask making. In 2019-2020, she was the Greenbaum Fellow at Newcomb Institute, to study narrativity and gender in fiber arts. This project, along with a project on copyright and time, are her current longterm research projects.

And every night, she quilts.

Professor Gard is an attorney in New York, and holds a J.D./PhD from the University of Arizona, where he specialized in the intersection of law, economics, and culture. In addition to teaching at Tulane, he is a non-resident fellow at Stanford Law School. Over the last twenty years, he has taught law, business, communication, writing, and literature and film. His interdisciplinary focus has given him insight into understanding the cultural and economic ways people interact at work, in their lives, and within the law. In the last five years, his teaching focus has been on entrepreneurship and social innovation at Tulane University, where he has taught business methods, negotiation, and the lean canvas as a strategy for success. He is also the CEO of a legal tech company, Limited Times, LLC, where he oversees negotiations with a range of companies, from multinationals to smaller entities. Professor Gard brings to the program the depth and understanding of not just a legal background, but an interdisciplinary academic expertise focused on “work and labor” through the 19^th-21^st centuries, as well as real-world experience of running a business where negotiating, managing, and company building are part of his daily concerns.

Contact Information: rgard@tulane.edu

Barry E. Hill is a recognized expert on environmental justice and sustainable development issues. Professor Hill is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Vermont Law School, where he has taught an environmental justice and sustainable development course for more than 20 years. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute, an environmental law and policy think-tank in Washington, D.C., since he retired from federal service in March 2015. Professor Hill was Senior Counsel for Environmental Governance, Office of International and Tribal Affairs, U.S.United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2007-2015. Previously, Professor Hill was Director of EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice from 1998-2007. Prior to that, he was the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Associate Solicitor, Division of Conservation and Wildlife, and the Director, Office of Hearings and Appeals. Prior positions include: Of Counsel to the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro, LLP, where he practiced environmental law; Project Manager of the Superfund Business Unit of ICF International, an international consulting firm; Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the District of Columbia; Legal Counsel to the Inspector General of the U.S. EPA; Law Secretary to the Deputy Administrative Judge of New York City (Criminal Division); Clinical Law Professor of the Prisoners’ Rights Clinic of the Antioch School of Law; and an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, New York.

Professor Hill has lectured in the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America, and the Caribbean on the following topics: establishing an environmental law and policy framework for national governments; environmental justice and sustainable development; capacity-building training in environmental law for judges, prosecutors, government regulators, citizens, and the bar; citizen involvement in the environmental enforcement process; and the impact of global warming on indigenous populations. In 2011, Professor Hill delivered the Distinguished Lecture for the Trinidad & Tobago Environmental Commission, and the Supreme Court of Trinidad & Tobago.

In 2011, Professor Hill was presented the “Distinguished Alumnus Award” by Brooklyn College of the City University of New York for his “commitment to environmental justice and sustainable development, and pioneering leadership in the field of environmental law and policy in the U.S. and abroad.

In 2001, Professor Hill was presented the “Award for Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy” by the American Bar Association for his work—teaching, research, and leadership—in the areas of environmental justice and sustainable development, and environmental law and policy.

Since 1999, Professor Hill has been a Fellow of the American Bar Association’s American Bar Foundation in recognition of his professional accomplishments, distinguished service, and commitment to the study of law and legal research.

Professor Hill received his B.A. degree in Political Science from Brooklyn College; M.A. degree in Political Science from Howard University; and a J.D. degree from the Cornell University Law School. In 2012, Professor Hill received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from California’s Thomas Jefferson School of Law, since he “steadfastly fought environmental injustice by taking action to decrease environmental risks and to raise awareness of these issues, and by providing communities with the appropriate tools needed to address serious environmental problems.

Andrea James is an associate in Holland & Knight’s Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice and Labor & Employment Practice. Ms. James focuses her practice in the area of general civil litigation and labor & employment. As a litigator, Ms. James has extensive experience representing employers in arbitration and mediations. Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Ms. James was an attorney in the Honors Program with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In her role there, Ms. James served as lead counsel in multiple unfair labor practice trials. In addition she handled drafting motions, pleadings and briefs, oral argument, decision writing and settlement negotiations.Contact Information: ajames8@tulane.edu

Tracy Law (they/them) conducts workplace investigations into a variety of issues, including claims of sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation and general misconduct. Tracy has conducted investigations in the public and private sector in a variety of industries, including law enforcement, tech and education. Prior to joining Ellis Investigations, Tracy worked for a prominent plaintiff-side employment law firm in Sacramento, California, representing current and former employees in litigation against their employers in both the public and private sectors.

Tracy received their Juris Doctorate from Tulane University Law School, graduating with honors, and their bachelor’s degree from the University of British Columbia. Tracy is based in Sacramento and conducts investigations throughout California.

Saru Matambanadzo is the Moise S. Steeg Associate Professor of Law at Tulane University School of Law. She is a nationally known authority on gender equality and workplace equity whose scholarship examines modern challenges in the workplace through the lenses of critical race theory, feminist legal theory, and LatCrit theory. Professor Matambanadzo, a longtime teacher in Tulane’s groundbreaking online Master of Jurisprudence in Labor and Employment Law program, was named Senior Director of Online Legal Education in 2022, with responsibility for overseeing the entire landscape of Tulane Law’s online education programs.

Professor Matambanadzo has a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She joined the Tulane Law faculty in 2010 after receiving a Ph.D. in women’s studies from UCLA. In 2014-15, she was Tulane Law’s inaugural Gordon Gamm Faculty Scholar, an award to support the work of early-career professors. In 2016, Professor Matambanadzo served as the chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues. And from 2016 to 2020, Professor Matambanadzo was the Ratner Family Professor in Social Entrepreneurship at Tulane's Taylor Center, an interdisciplinary program focused on applying design thinking to public policy challenges. In addition, she served as a founding board member for ClassCrits.org and she currently serves on the board of LatCrit.org. Before her time at Tulane, Professor Matambanadzo taught seminars and courses in gender and legal studies at a variety of institutions including UCLA, California State University-Long Beach, and the University of Oregon, and was a summer fellow at the UCLA Williams Project.

With an interdisciplinary grounding in philosophy, gender studies, and law, Professor Matambanadzo takes an interactive interdisciplinary approach to solving legal problems. She has published articles on a variety of topics including LatCrit theory, sex discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, gender identity, philosophy of legal education, legal personhood, and feminist legal theory.

Carolyn McIntosh is a senior partner in the Denver office of international law firm Squire Patton Boggs and a member of the firm’s Environmental, Safety & Health Practice Group. She counsels clients on complex environmental compliance, permitting, and federal land approvals, as wells as environmental, natural resources, and public lands litigation. Her work includes environmental permitting and land use matters arising under federal and state environmental laws including, CERCLA, RCRA, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the General Mining Law of 1872, Mineral Leasing Acts, the National Historic Preservation Act, and state counterpart laws. Carolyn’s clients include mining companies, one of the nation’s premier Class I railroads, renewable energy developers, and municipalities. She regularly works on matters before the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Bureau of Land Management, the Army Corps of Engineers, and numerous state regulatory agencies. Carolyn is a member of the executive committee of the American Exploration and Mining Association and the current chair of the American Bar Association Superfund and Natural Resource Damages Litigation Committee.

Karis Gong Parnham is an Assistant General Counsel at Entergy. She is a graduate of Princeton University, where she received her undergraduate degree in 2006, and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she received her J.D. in 2009. Prior to joining Entergy, she was an associate at the Skadden Arps law firm. Ms. Parnham’s expertise focuses on the application of federal administrative and energy regulatory law to novel business challenges, and she has represented clients in proceedings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and in federal courts.

Scott Schneider is also an award-winning professor at Tulane University where he teaches courses in both the law and business schools on, among other things, Higher Education Law and Labor and Employment Law. Scott’s experience with education law issues is informed by a real world understanding of how colleges and universities operate as he spent six years working in the Office of General Counsel for Tulane University.

Scott Schneider heads the firm’s Higher Education Practice Group and is a nationally recognized professional on higher education legal issues and institutional response to sex assault. He has litigated on behalf of education institutions around the country. He also provides expert witness testimony on matters dealing with institutional response to allegations of sexual misconduct and designs and delivers training programs on a host of education issues, including Title IX compliance obligations; legal issues in faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure revocation; and managing risk in student affairs.

Scott is a frequently requested and nationally recognized consultant, presenter, and trainer who speaks on a bevy of issues related to education law. He has been featured in various national media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS News, the Wall Street Journal, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has also provided training or delivered presentations for the National Association of College and University Attorneys, the National Association of Independent Schools, the Association of Student Conduct Administrators’ Gehring Institute, the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement, Educause, and various associations of independent schools. In addition, Scott has been retained by the National Center for Campus Public Safety to serve as a faculty member for its Trauma-Informed Sexual Assault Investigation and Adjudication training program for campus officials.

Prior to working at Tulane, Scott practiced law in the New Orleans office of Fisher Phillips from 1998 to 2009. During this time, he defended companies of various sizes in cases involving allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination, defamation, breach of employment contract, and other employment torts.

He is "AV" Peer Review Rated by Martindale-Hubbell for preeminent skill and ethics and has been selected for Best Lawyers in America. He has also been selected twice by New Orleans CityBusiness as a Leader in Law.

Contact Information: scott.schneider@huschblackwell.com

Justin Swaim has only been an adjunct professor at Tulane since 2021. Professor Swaim graduated from Southeastern Louisiana University in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science. Professor Swaim then worked at Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann as a paralegal before returning to law school in 2012. He graduated magna cum laude from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law in 2015. While at Loyola, Professor Swaim served as a managing editor on the Loyola Law Review, and received numerous honors and awards, such as the Loyola Law Review Warren E. Mouledoux Editor-in-Chief’s Award, Law Excellence Awards in numerous areas of law, and the Warren E. Mouledoux Professional Responsibility Award.

Professor Swaim began work as an associate at Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann shortly after graduation in 2015. He concentrates his practice on public utilities regulation, energy and general business litigation matters in addition to appellate law. He regularly assists clients with challenging litigation issues. Justin has represented the Louisiana Public Service Commission in numerous complex proceedings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Patrick Traylor is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Vinson & Elkins LLP where he is a member of the Environment and Natural Resources practice. He is a graduate of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, where he received his undergraduate degree in History in 1991. He received his Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the South Texas College of Law Houston in 1994 and his Master of Laws degree in Environmental Law from The George Washington University College of Law in 1997.

While in law school, he clerked in the Office of Regional Counsel at Environmental Protection Agency Region 6, in the Environmental Crimes Section of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, in the Environmental Enforcement Section of the United States Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division, and in the Office of General Counsel at the American Chemistry Council. He joined the Washington, D.C. law firm of Hogan & Hartson, LLP (now Hogan Lovells US LLP) in 1997 as an associate in the Environmental practice group and was elected to the partnership in 2004.

In 2007, he was appointed by President George W. Bush as a member of the Department of the Interior Wind Turbine Advisory Committee, an appointment that was confirmed in 2010 by President Obama. In 2017, he was appointed by President Trump as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, where he served as one of the highest-ranking environmental enforcement officials in the federal government, a position he held until 2019 when he joined Vinson & Elkins.

During his tenure at the EPA, Professor Traylor supervised the agency’s nationwide Clean Air Act civil enforcement docket. He was also integrally involved in the development of every significant enforcement policy and represented the enforcement program in reviewing all Clean Air Act regulations and guidance issued by the EPA. He now leverages this insight into the EPA’s enforcement processes to effectively and efficiently represent clients facing enforcement investigations and actions. In addition to his litigation practice, companies in the energy sector have turned to him to secure project-critical environmental approvals for the construction and expansion of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of projects at refineries, petrochemical and fertilizer plants, LNG export terminals, and coal- and gas-fired power plants.

He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and the State of Texas and before the Supreme Court of the United States, two United States Courts of Appeal, and numerous United States District Courts.