Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Michael Buschbacher is a partner at Boyden Gray PLLC. He represents public and private companies, trade associations, non-profits, and individuals in high-stakes litigation and administrative proceedings, with a particular focus on environmental and energy matters.
In addition to trial-level work, Mr. Buschbacher maintains an active appellate practice, both as merits counsel and as counsel for amici curiae. He has written amicus briefs quoted by the Seventh and Ninth Circuits. And his Supreme Court advocacy has been cited by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and E&E News. Mr. Buschbacher’s commentary on legal issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The American Conservative.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Buschbacher served at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There, he advised senior Department leadership, served as the lead attorney on several lawsuits, and helped draft policy memoranda for the Department on the proper scope and procedure for environmental enforcement. Prior to serving in the government, Mr. Buschbacher was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Buschbacher is a former clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Magistrate Judge Paul R. Cherry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Buschbacher holds a B.A. in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School.
Partner, Luther Strange & Associates
Annie Donaldson Talley is Partner at Luther Strange and Associates. She recently departed the White House after serving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President. Over the past four years, she provided outside counsel to the Donald J. Trump for President campaign; helped stand up and manage the White House Counsel’s Office; interfaced with agencies across the federal government; and advised the President of the United States, White House Counsel, Chief of Staff and other senior staff across the Executive Office of the President on a broad range of issues from regulatory reform to executive nominations to the day-to-day issues facing the Administration.
Prior to her White House service, Annie Donaldson Talley counseled clients in the non-profit, for-profit, political, and government sectors, as well as high-profile individuals in private practice at Jones Day and Patton Boggs. She provided strategic counseling to clients structuring their affairs to ensure compliance with a web of state and federal laws and represented clients in complex, multi-faceted investigations, leading teams navigating issues of intense public scrutiny.
Annie Donaldson Talley is also a veteran of three presidential campaigns and served in state government. She holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Alabama and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Harvard Law Review. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama with her husband, Brett.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
JUSTIN SAVAGE is a global co-leader of the firm’s Environmental, Health, and Safety practice and co-leads the Automotive and Mobility sector team, where he is a leading strategist for companies navigating the intersection of complex regulation, high-stakes litigation, and transformative industry change. For nearly three decades, he has led clients through their most consequential environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) disputes and mobility-sector challenges, earning a reputation as both a trusted counselor and a forceful advocate in the courtroom and the boardroom. A core part of Justin’s practice also focuses on regulatory strategy and market entry, advising emerging technology companies, new market entrants, and established industry leaders on launching new products, technologies, and business models. He regularly counsel clients in emerging fields such as robotics and AI on engaging with regulators, anticipating enforcement and compliance risk, and building defensible regulatory strategies that support growth rather than slow it.
Clients praise Justin as “an excellent litigator… strategically clever and creative… attentive, thoughtful and willing to go above and beyond” (Chambers USA 2025). Chambers USA has ranked him for Band 1 for Environment in District of Columbia (2017–2025) and Band 3 for Transportation: Road (Automotive) in USA—Nationwide (2023–2025).
Justin has won some of the most closely watched EH&S and transportation disputes of the past two decades and guided companies through crises where business continuity, brand reputation, and regulatory survival were on the line. His leadership has been repeatedly recognized: he is a three-time Law360 Environmental “MVP” (2018, 2024, 2025) and a Lawdragon “500 Global Leaders in Crisis Management” (2025-2026). He is the first call for companies facing bet-the-company challenges.
Justin’s clients concentrate in heavily regulated industries, including auto and mobility, aviation, chemicals, data centers, energy, mining, and refining. Justin litigates and counsels across the spectrum of U.S. environmental, transportation, and administrative laws, including the Clean Air Act (Title I, mobile sources, and fuels), incident response, RMP, NHTSA, Clean Water Act, TSCA, CSB investigations, APA claims, FOIA litigation, NEPA, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Prior to joining Sidley, Justin served for nearly a decade at the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led teams in several multi-billion dollar enforcement cases. In his career, Justin has regularly taught on a range of environmental and litigation topics. For several years, Justin served as an instructor at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center where he taught hundreds of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and other agency lawyers on topics that included trial advocacy and evidence. Since rejoining private practice, Justin has served eight times as a faculty member for the American Law Institute’s Environmental Litigation program. He also lectured on a range of litigation and trial topics for bar associations and organizations, including serving as an instructor for the FAA on trial advocacy.
Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Michael Buschbacher is a partner at Boyden Gray PLLC. He represents public and private companies, trade associations, non-profits, and individuals in high-stakes litigation and administrative proceedings, with a particular focus on environmental and energy matters.
In addition to trial-level work, Mr. Buschbacher maintains an active appellate practice, both as merits counsel and as counsel for amici curiae. He has written amicus briefs quoted by the Seventh and Ninth Circuits. And his Supreme Court advocacy has been cited by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and E&E News. Mr. Buschbacher’s commentary on legal issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The American Conservative.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Buschbacher served at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There, he advised senior Department leadership, served as the lead attorney on several lawsuits, and helped draft policy memoranda for the Department on the proper scope and procedure for environmental enforcement. Prior to serving in the government, Mr. Buschbacher was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Buschbacher is a former clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Magistrate Judge Paul R. Cherry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Buschbacher holds a B.A. in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
JUSTIN SAVAGE is a global co-leader of the firm’s Environmental, Health, and Safety practice and co-leads the Automotive and Mobility sector team, where he is a leading strategist for companies navigating the intersection of complex regulation, high-stakes litigation, and transformative industry change. For nearly three decades, he has led clients through their most consequential environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) disputes and mobility-sector challenges, earning a reputation as both a trusted counselor and a forceful advocate in the courtroom and the boardroom. A core part of Justin’s practice also focuses on regulatory strategy and market entry, advising emerging technology companies, new market entrants, and established industry leaders on launching new products, technologies, and business models. He regularly counsel clients in emerging fields such as robotics and AI on engaging with regulators, anticipating enforcement and compliance risk, and building defensible regulatory strategies that support growth rather than slow it.
Clients praise Justin as “an excellent litigator… strategically clever and creative… attentive, thoughtful and willing to go above and beyond” (Chambers USA 2025). Chambers USA has ranked him for Band 1 for Environment in District of Columbia (2017–2025) and Band 3 for Transportation: Road (Automotive) in USA—Nationwide (2023–2025).
Justin has won some of the most closely watched EH&S and transportation disputes of the past two decades and guided companies through crises where business continuity, brand reputation, and regulatory survival were on the line. His leadership has been repeatedly recognized: he is a three-time Law360 Environmental “MVP” (2018, 2024, 2025) and a Lawdragon “500 Global Leaders in Crisis Management” (2025-2026). He is the first call for companies facing bet-the-company challenges.
Justin’s clients concentrate in heavily regulated industries, including auto and mobility, aviation, chemicals, data centers, energy, mining, and refining. Justin litigates and counsels across the spectrum of U.S. environmental, transportation, and administrative laws, including the Clean Air Act (Title I, mobile sources, and fuels), incident response, RMP, NHTSA, Clean Water Act, TSCA, CSB investigations, APA claims, FOIA litigation, NEPA, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Prior to joining Sidley, Justin served for nearly a decade at the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led teams in several multi-billion dollar enforcement cases. In his career, Justin has regularly taught on a range of environmental and litigation topics. For several years, Justin served as an instructor at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center where he taught hundreds of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and other agency lawyers on topics that included trial advocacy and evidence. Since rejoining private practice, Justin has served eight times as a faculty member for the American Law Institute’s Environmental Litigation program. He also lectured on a range of litigation and trial topics for bar associations and organizations, including serving as an instructor for the FAA on trial advocacy.
Partner, Luther Strange & Associates
Annie Donaldson Talley is Partner at Luther Strange and Associates. She recently departed the White House after serving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President. Over the past four years, she provided outside counsel to the Donald J. Trump for President campaign; helped stand up and manage the White House Counsel’s Office; interfaced with agencies across the federal government; and advised the President of the United States, White House Counsel, Chief of Staff and other senior staff across the Executive Office of the President on a broad range of issues from regulatory reform to executive nominations to the day-to-day issues facing the Administration.
Prior to her White House service, Annie Donaldson Talley counseled clients in the non-profit, for-profit, political, and government sectors, as well as high-profile individuals in private practice at Jones Day and Patton Boggs. She provided strategic counseling to clients structuring their affairs to ensure compliance with a web of state and federal laws and represented clients in complex, multi-faceted investigations, leading teams navigating issues of intense public scrutiny.
Annie Donaldson Talley is also a veteran of three presidential campaigns and served in state government. She holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Alabama and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Harvard Law Review. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama with her husband, Brett.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics; Co-Director, Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Christina Parajon Skinner is an expert on financial regulation. Her research focuses on central banking, the debt markets, separation of powers, corporate governance, and law and macroeconomics. Professor Skinner’s work is international and comparative in scope, drawing on her experience as an academic and central bank lawyer in the United Kingdom. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among other leading academic journals. Professor Skinner has also contributed to financial regulatory policy working groups, including those convened by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Financial Stability Board, and the U.K. Banking Standards Board.
Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, Professor Skinner served as legal counsel at the Bank of England, in the Financial Stability Division of the Bank’s Legal Directorate. Her work there focused principally on matters of bank resolution, financial market infrastructure, and macroprudential policy. Previously, Professor Skinner was an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Law Department. From 2014-2016, she was a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School.
Professor Skinner received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an A.B. from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, with a concentration in international economics. She received certificates of proficiency in European Politics and Society, and Spanish Language and Culture.
She is married with five children.
Director of Research, American Economic Liberties Project
Matt Stoller is a public intellectual who writes about the American anti-monopoly
tradition. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year
War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller is the Director of Research at
the American Economic Liberties Project. He publishes an email newsletter called BIG.
Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, and worked in the House of Representatives on the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
He has lectured on competition policy and media at Columbia University, Harvard Law, Duke Law, Bertelsmann Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, West Point and the National Communications Commission of Taiwan. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler.
He has also produced for MSNBC and starred in a short-lived television show on FX called Brand X with Russell Brand.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics; Co-Director, Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Christina Parajon Skinner is an expert on financial regulation. Her research focuses on central banking, the debt markets, separation of powers, corporate governance, and law and macroeconomics. Professor Skinner’s work is international and comparative in scope, drawing on her experience as an academic and central bank lawyer in the United Kingdom. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among other leading academic journals. Professor Skinner has also contributed to financial regulatory policy working groups, including those convened by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Financial Stability Board, and the U.K. Banking Standards Board.
Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, Professor Skinner served as legal counsel at the Bank of England, in the Financial Stability Division of the Bank’s Legal Directorate. Her work there focused principally on matters of bank resolution, financial market infrastructure, and macroprudential policy. Previously, Professor Skinner was an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Law Department. From 2014-2016, she was a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School.
Professor Skinner received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an A.B. from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, with a concentration in international economics. She received certificates of proficiency in European Politics and Society, and Spanish Language and Culture.
She is married with five children.
Director of Research, American Economic Liberties Project
Matt Stoller is a public intellectual who writes about the American anti-monopoly
tradition. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year
War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller is the Director of Research at
the American Economic Liberties Project. He publishes an email newsletter called BIG.
Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, and worked in the House of Representatives on the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
He has lectured on competition policy and media at Columbia University, Harvard Law, Duke Law, Bertelsmann Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, West Point and the National Communications Commission of Taiwan. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler.
He has also produced for MSNBC and starred in a short-lived television show on FX called Brand X with Russell Brand.
Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor
Jonathan Berry is Solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor, in service to President Trump’s agenda to put American workers first. He leads the Department’s lawyers in advising the Secretary and agency leadership on all aspects of law and in representing the Department in court. He was previously managing partner at Boyden Gray PLLC, where he provided strategic counsel and litigated on issues at the intersection of law, politics, and public policy. Earlier, he headed the regulatory office at Labor, and also served at the Department of Justice, in the first Trump Administration. Mr. Berry served as a law clerk to Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and to Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., of the Supreme Court of the United States.
United States Senator, Utah
Elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the basic liberties of Americans and Utahns as a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles.
Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early on. His father, Rex Lee, who served as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, would often discuss varied aspects of judicial and constitutional doctrine around the kitchen table, from Due Process to the uses of Executive Plenary Power. He attended most of his father's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique, hands-on experience and understanding of government up close.
Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science, and served as BYU's Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU's Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Lee spent several years as an attorney with the law firm Sidley & Austin specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Lee served the state of Utah as Governor Jon Huntsman's General Counsel and was later honored to reunite with Justice Alito, now on the Supreme Court, for a one-year clerkship. He returned to private practice in 2007.
Throughout his career, Lee earned a reputation as an outstanding practitioner of the law based on his sound judgment, abilities in the courtroom, and thorough understanding of the Constitution.
Today, Lee fights to preserve America's proud founding document in the United States Senate. He advocates efforts to support constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic prosperity.
Lee is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee protecting business competition and personal freedom.
He also oversees issues critical to Utah as the Chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He serves on the Commerce Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, as well.
In the 114th Congress, Lee also began his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, where he works with his Republican colleagues in the Senate to introduce bold and innovative solutions to issues facing the American people.
Lee and his wife Sharon live in Alpine, Utah, with their three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a two-year mission for the Church in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Vice President and Publisher, The Political Forum
Stephen R. Soukup is the senior commentator, Vice President, and Publisher of The Political Forum, an “independent research provider” that delivers research and consulting services to the institutional investment community, with an emphasis on economic, social, political, and geopolitical events likely to have an impact on the financial markets in the United States and abroad. He is also the Director of The Political Forum Institute, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to creating and preserving community, primarily among those who earn their livings and create wealth for the nation through the capital markets. Mr. Soukup has followed politics and federal regulatory policy for the financial community since 1996, when he joined the award-winning Washington-research office of Prudential Securities. He is also the Fellow in Culture and Economy at the Culture of Life Foundation.
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden was appointed as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on July 7, 2025. Alongside Secretary Brooke L. Rollins, Deputy Secretary Vaden leads the Department’s operations and implements policies that support America’s food and farm systems. A native of Union City, Tennessee, Deputy Secretary Vaden brings expertise in agricultural policy, law, and rural development. Previously, he served as a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade and as General Counsel of USDA. Throughout Deputy Secretary Vaden’s time as General Counsel, he led successful Supreme Court litigation, advanced regulatory reform, and supported the implementation of the 2018 Farm Bill. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Vanderbilt University. A public servant with strong agricultural roots, Deputy Secretary Vaden is committed to revitalizing rural America and ensuring an abundant, affordable, and safe U.S. food supply.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
Partner, Boyden Gray PLLC
Michael Buschbacher is a partner at Boyden Gray PLLC. He represents public and private companies, trade associations, non-profits, and individuals in high-stakes litigation and administrative proceedings, with a particular focus on environmental and energy matters.
In addition to trial-level work, Mr. Buschbacher maintains an active appellate practice, both as merits counsel and as counsel for amici curiae. He has written amicus briefs quoted by the Seventh and Ninth Circuits. And his Supreme Court advocacy has been cited by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and E&E News. Mr. Buschbacher’s commentary on legal issues has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The American Conservative.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Buschbacher served at the U.S. Department of Justice as counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. There, he advised senior Department leadership, served as the lead attorney on several lawsuits, and helped draft policy memoranda for the Department on the proper scope and procedure for environmental enforcement. Prior to serving in the government, Mr. Buschbacher was an associate in the D.C. office of Sidley Austin.
Mr. Buschbacher is a former clerk to Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Magistrate Judge Paul R. Cherry of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Buschbacher holds a B.A. in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School.
Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
JUSTIN SAVAGE is a global co-leader of the firm’s Environmental, Health, and Safety practice and co-leads the Automotive and Mobility sector team, where he is a leading strategist for companies navigating the intersection of complex regulation, high-stakes litigation, and transformative industry change. For nearly three decades, he has led clients through their most consequential environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) disputes and mobility-sector challenges, earning a reputation as both a trusted counselor and a forceful advocate in the courtroom and the boardroom. A core part of Justin’s practice also focuses on regulatory strategy and market entry, advising emerging technology companies, new market entrants, and established industry leaders on launching new products, technologies, and business models. He regularly counsel clients in emerging fields such as robotics and AI on engaging with regulators, anticipating enforcement and compliance risk, and building defensible regulatory strategies that support growth rather than slow it.
Clients praise Justin as “an excellent litigator… strategically clever and creative… attentive, thoughtful and willing to go above and beyond” (Chambers USA 2025). Chambers USA has ranked him for Band 1 for Environment in District of Columbia (2017–2025) and Band 3 for Transportation: Road (Automotive) in USA—Nationwide (2023–2025).
Justin has won some of the most closely watched EH&S and transportation disputes of the past two decades and guided companies through crises where business continuity, brand reputation, and regulatory survival were on the line. His leadership has been repeatedly recognized: he is a three-time Law360 Environmental “MVP” (2018, 2024, 2025) and a Lawdragon “500 Global Leaders in Crisis Management” (2025-2026). He is the first call for companies facing bet-the-company challenges.
Justin’s clients concentrate in heavily regulated industries, including auto and mobility, aviation, chemicals, data centers, energy, mining, and refining. Justin litigates and counsels across the spectrum of U.S. environmental, transportation, and administrative laws, including the Clean Air Act (Title I, mobile sources, and fuels), incident response, RMP, NHTSA, Clean Water Act, TSCA, CSB investigations, APA claims, FOIA litigation, NEPA, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Prior to joining Sidley, Justin served for nearly a decade at the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he led teams in several multi-billion dollar enforcement cases. In his career, Justin has regularly taught on a range of environmental and litigation topics. For several years, Justin served as an instructor at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center where he taught hundreds of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and other agency lawyers on topics that included trial advocacy and evidence. Since rejoining private practice, Justin has served eight times as a faculty member for the American Law Institute’s Environmental Litigation program. He also lectured on a range of litigation and trial topics for bar associations and organizations, including serving as an instructor for the FAA on trial advocacy.
Partner, Luther Strange & Associates
Annie Donaldson Talley is Partner at Luther Strange and Associates. She recently departed the White House after serving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President. Over the past four years, she provided outside counsel to the Donald J. Trump for President campaign; helped stand up and manage the White House Counsel’s Office; interfaced with agencies across the federal government; and advised the President of the United States, White House Counsel, Chief of Staff and other senior staff across the Executive Office of the President on a broad range of issues from regulatory reform to executive nominations to the day-to-day issues facing the Administration.
Prior to her White House service, Annie Donaldson Talley counseled clients in the non-profit, for-profit, political, and government sectors, as well as high-profile individuals in private practice at Jones Day and Patton Boggs. She provided strategic counseling to clients structuring their affairs to ensure compliance with a web of state and federal laws and represented clients in complex, multi-faceted investigations, leading teams navigating issues of intense public scrutiny.
Annie Donaldson Talley is also a veteran of three presidential campaigns and served in state government. She holds a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Alabama and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Harvard Law Review. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama with her husband, Brett.
Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor
Jonathan Berry is Solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor, in service to President Trump’s agenda to put American workers first. He leads the Department’s lawyers in advising the Secretary and agency leadership on all aspects of law and in representing the Department in court. He was previously managing partner at Boyden Gray PLLC, where he provided strategic counsel and litigated on issues at the intersection of law, politics, and public policy. Earlier, he headed the regulatory office at Labor, and also served at the Department of Justice, in the first Trump Administration. Mr. Berry served as a law clerk to Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and to Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Judge Paul Matey was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2019 by President Trump.
Before his judicial service, Judge Matey was a partner at Lowenstein Sandler in New Jersey where he practiced complex commercial litigation and criminal defense. Earlier, Judge Matey was the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for University Hospital Newark, an academic medical center and teaching hospital.
He also served as the Deputy Chief Counsel to Governor Chris Christie, and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of New Jersey, where he was awarded the Justice Department’s Director’s Award for Superior Performance. He also practiced at the Washington D.C. firm of Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, and served as a law clerk to judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Scranton, a Jesuit University, in 1993, and his juris doctorate, summa cum laude, from Seton Hall University School of Law in 2001, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Seton Hall Law Review.
In 2019, Judge Matey was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and, since 2020, has lectured on administrative law and the American legal history at Seton Hall.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics; Co-Director, Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Christina Parajon Skinner is an expert on financial regulation. Her research focuses on central banking, the debt markets, separation of powers, corporate governance, and law and macroeconomics. Professor Skinner’s work is international and comparative in scope, drawing on her experience as an academic and central bank lawyer in the United Kingdom. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among other leading academic journals. Professor Skinner has also contributed to financial regulatory policy working groups, including those convened by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Financial Stability Board, and the U.K. Banking Standards Board.
Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, Professor Skinner served as legal counsel at the Bank of England, in the Financial Stability Division of the Bank’s Legal Directorate. Her work there focused principally on matters of bank resolution, financial market infrastructure, and macroprudential policy. Previously, Professor Skinner was an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Law Department. From 2014-2016, she was a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School.
Professor Skinner received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an A.B. from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, with a concentration in international economics. She received certificates of proficiency in European Politics and Society, and Spanish Language and Culture.
She is married with five children.
Director of Research, American Economic Liberties Project
Matt Stoller is a public intellectual who writes about the American anti-monopoly
tradition. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year
War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller is the Director of Research at
the American Economic Liberties Project. He publishes an email newsletter called BIG.
Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, and worked in the House of Representatives on the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
He has lectured on competition policy and media at Columbia University, Harvard Law, Duke Law, Bertelsmann Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, West Point and the National Communications Commission of Taiwan. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler.
He has also produced for MSNBC and starred in a short-lived television show on FX called Brand X with Russell Brand.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
Judge Katsas was appointed to the D.C. Circuit in December 2017. He graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, where he was an executive editor on the Harvard Law Review. Between 1989 and 1992, he served as a law clerk to Judge Edward Becker on the Third Circuit, to then-Judge Clarence Thomas on the D.C. Circuit, and to Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court. Between 1992 and 2001, he was an associate and then partner in the Washington office of Jones Day, where he specialized in appellate and complex civil litigation. Between 2001 and 2009, he served in many senior positions in the Department of Justice, including as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division and as Acting Associate Attorney General. In 2009, he returned to Jones Day. From January to December 2017, he served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President.
Before joining the bench, Judge Katsas argued more than 75 appeals, including three cases in the Supreme Court, 13 cases in the D.C. Circuit, and cases in every other federal court of appeals. By appointment of the Chief Justice, he served on the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules from 2013 to 2017. In 2016, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.
John S. Battle Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform and property rights in human biological materials.
Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics; Co-Director, Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Christina Parajon Skinner is an expert on financial regulation. Her research focuses on central banking, the debt markets, separation of powers, corporate governance, and law and macroeconomics. Professor Skinner’s work is international and comparative in scope, drawing on her experience as an academic and central bank lawyer in the United Kingdom. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among other leading academic journals. Professor Skinner has also contributed to financial regulatory policy working groups, including those convened by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Financial Stability Board, and the U.K. Banking Standards Board.
Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, Professor Skinner served as legal counsel at the Bank of England, in the Financial Stability Division of the Bank’s Legal Directorate. Her work there focused principally on matters of bank resolution, financial market infrastructure, and macroprudential policy. Previously, Professor Skinner was an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Law Department. From 2014-2016, she was a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School.
Professor Skinner received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an A.B. from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, with a concentration in international economics. She received certificates of proficiency in European Politics and Society, and Spanish Language and Culture.
She is married with five children.
Director of Research, American Economic Liberties Project
Matt Stoller is a public intellectual who writes about the American anti-monopoly
tradition. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year
War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller is the Director of Research at
the American Economic Liberties Project. He publishes an email newsletter called BIG.
Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, and worked in the House of Representatives on the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
He has lectured on competition policy and media at Columbia University, Harvard Law, Duke Law, Bertelsmann Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, West Point and the National Communications Commission of Taiwan. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler.
He has also produced for MSNBC and starred in a short-lived television show on FX called Brand X with Russell Brand.
Solicitor, U.S. Department of Labor
Jonathan Berry is Solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor, in service to President Trump’s agenda to put American workers first. He leads the Department’s lawyers in advising the Secretary and agency leadership on all aspects of law and in representing the Department in court. He was previously managing partner at Boyden Gray PLLC, where he provided strategic counsel and litigated on issues at the intersection of law, politics, and public policy. Earlier, he headed the regulatory office at Labor, and also served at the Department of Justice, in the first Trump Administration. Mr. Berry served as a law clerk to Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and to Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., of the Supreme Court of the United States.
United States Senator, Utah
Elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the basic liberties of Americans and Utahns as a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles.
Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early on. His father, Rex Lee, who served as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, would often discuss varied aspects of judicial and constitutional doctrine around the kitchen table, from Due Process to the uses of Executive Plenary Power. He attended most of his father's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique, hands-on experience and understanding of government up close.
Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science, and served as BYU's Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU's Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Lee spent several years as an attorney with the law firm Sidley & Austin specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Lee served the state of Utah as Governor Jon Huntsman's General Counsel and was later honored to reunite with Justice Alito, now on the Supreme Court, for a one-year clerkship. He returned to private practice in 2007.
Throughout his career, Lee earned a reputation as an outstanding practitioner of the law based on his sound judgment, abilities in the courtroom, and thorough understanding of the Constitution.
Today, Lee fights to preserve America's proud founding document in the United States Senate. He advocates efforts to support constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic prosperity.
Lee is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee protecting business competition and personal freedom.
He also oversees issues critical to Utah as the Chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He serves on the Commerce Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, as well.
In the 114th Congress, Lee also began his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, where he works with his Republican colleagues in the Senate to introduce bold and innovative solutions to issues facing the American people.
Lee and his wife Sharon live in Alpine, Utah, with their three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a two-year mission for the Church in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Vice President and Publisher, The Political Forum
Stephen R. Soukup is the senior commentator, Vice President, and Publisher of The Political Forum, an “independent research provider” that delivers research and consulting services to the institutional investment community, with an emphasis on economic, social, political, and geopolitical events likely to have an impact on the financial markets in the United States and abroad. He is also the Director of The Political Forum Institute, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to creating and preserving community, primarily among those who earn their livings and create wealth for the nation through the capital markets. Mr. Soukup has followed politics and federal regulatory policy for the financial community since 1996, when he joined the award-winning Washington-research office of Prudential Securities. He is also the Fellow in Culture and Economy at the Culture of Life Foundation.
Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Judge Stephen Alexander Vaden was appointed as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on July 7, 2025. Alongside Secretary Brooke L. Rollins, Deputy Secretary Vaden leads the Department’s operations and implements policies that support America’s food and farm systems. A native of Union City, Tennessee, Deputy Secretary Vaden brings expertise in agricultural policy, law, and rural development. Previously, he served as a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade and as General Counsel of USDA. Throughout Deputy Secretary Vaden’s time as General Counsel, he led successful Supreme Court litigation, advanced regulatory reform, and supported the implementation of the 2018 Farm Bill. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Vanderbilt University. A public servant with strong agricultural roots, Deputy Secretary Vaden is committed to revitalizing rural America and ensuring an abundant, affordable, and safe U.S. food supply.
Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Co-Director, Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State
Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.
Mr. White practiced constitutional and administrative law, particularly in the regulation of energy and financial markets. He started his legal career as a law clerk for Judge David B. Sentelle at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Mr. White has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Affairs, Commentary, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and Notre Dame Law Review, among other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, and for many years, he was one of the Weekly Standard’s lead writers on constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Mr. White has testified often before Congress, including before the Senate’s Committees on the Judiciary; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and before the House’s Judiciary and Financial Services Committees. In 2018, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary called him to testify in Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to advise senators on Kavanaugh’s approach to administrative law.
In 2021, he served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, where he criticized “Court packing” and other efforts to restructure the Supreme Court. In 2017, he was appointed to serve on the Administrative Conference of the United States. He also serves on the leadership council for the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, which he will chair in 2023–24. Before joining AEI, he was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Mr. White has a JD from Harvard Law School and a bachelor of business administration from the College of Business at the University of Iowa.
The Return of Supplemental Environmental Projects
Michael Buschbacher, Annie Donaldson Talley, Justin Savage
On May 5, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a new "Comprehensive Environmental...
Deep Dive Episode 222 – The Return of Supplemental Environmental Projects
Michael Buschbacher, Justin Savage, Annie Donaldson Talley
On May 5, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a new "Comprehensive Environmental...
The Return of Supplemental Environmental Projects
A Regulatory Transparency Project Webinar
TeleforumPrivate Sector Diversity Programs: Perks and Pitfalls
Freedom of Thought Dinner & Panel
Public and Private Regulation: What's Driving ESG?
Washington, DCPublic and Private Regulation: What's Driving ESG?
C. Boyden Gray, Gregory G. Katsas, Julia D. Mahoney, Christina P. Skinner, Matt Stoller
We recognize the risks of agency overreach when rulemaking seeks to impose ESG considerations on...
Public and Private Regulation: What's Driving ESG?
C. Boyden Gray, Gregory G. Katsas, Julia D. Mahoney, Christina P. Skinner, Matt Stoller
We recognize the risks of agency overreach when rulemaking seeks to impose ESG considerations on...
Public and Private Regulation: What's Driving ESG?
A Dinner at the Mayflower Sponsored by the Freedom of Thought Project
Washington, DCWelcome & Plenary Session: Regulation by Surrogate? Is the Government Evading the Administrative Procedure Act?
Jonathan Berry, Mike S. Lee, Stephen Soukup, Stephen Alexander Vaden, Adam White
In 1946, after ten years of study, Congress passed, and President Truman signed, the Administrative...
Welcome & Plenary Session: Regulation by Surrogate? Is the Government Evading the Administrative Procedure Act?
Tenth Annual Executive Branch Review
Washington, DC