United States Attorney, Eastern District of California
Mr. Grant was appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California beginning on August 11, 2025. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), he was further appointed by the district court effective December 9, 2025.
Mr. Grant is a veteran of the Department of Justice, having served twice in Washington, D.C.: from 1991 to 1993 as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel, and from 2017 to 2021 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). During his tenure at ENRD, he supervised more than a hundred Department litigators advancing the interests of the United States and its agencies in both enforcement and defensive matters, both civil and criminal.
In addition to his service in the Department, Mr. Grant has decades of experience in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. That experience includes arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous other federal and state courts.
Mr. Grant served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (retired) and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court’s October 1994 Term. Earlier he served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Grant grew up in Modesto, California and raised his family in Sacramento County. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics (1986) and a law degree (1990).
Special Counsel for Native American Affairs to Gov. Stitt
Ryan Leonard has extensive experience litigating cases in federal and state courts, and specializes in solving complex business problems for his clients. Ryan practices primarily in the areas of business law and litigation, insurance law, receivership law and receiverships, oil and gas litigation, and Native American and Tribal law. He maintains the highest Martindale-Hubbell Preeminent Attorney Recognition (“AV”) rating for skill and ethics for attorneys based on professional peer reviews, and has been selected annually since 2016 as a top-rated “Super Lawyer” for business litigation.
Prior to entering private practice, Ryan served as a state prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office in Canadian County, Oklahoma. Ryan also served for four years (1994-98) as a Legislative Assistant to former U.S. Senator Don Nickles in Washington, D.C., in which capacity he served as the Senator’s chief legislative aide on issues involving the federal judiciary, Indian Affairs, transportation, agriculture and natural resources.
Ryan is very active in the local community, currently serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Mercy Hospital- Oklahoma City. Ryan co-founded and is a past president of the Downtown Club of Oklahoma City, and previously served on the Board of Trustees of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, the Board of Directors of the Central Oklahoma Red Cross, the Central Oklahoma YMCA and KIPP Charter School, the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for the Oklahoma Academy of State Goals, the Legal Ethics Committee of the Oklahoma Bar Association and was a member of Leadership Oklahoma Class XIX. Ryan has also volunteered his time pro bono for Oklahoma Lawyers for Children, serving children at risk in the foster care system. At a younger age, Ryan earned the rank of Eagle Scout.
In 2008, Ryan was appointed by the Governor as a Commissioner representing the State of Oklahoma on the national Uniform Law Commission, and was reappointed in 2014 and 2018. In 2015, Ryan was appointed by the President of the national organization to the Executive Committee, and as chair of the national Legislative Council. Ryan has served on numerous committees within the organization, including drafting committees implementing the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements (facilitating international contracts) and drafting a Model Tribal Probate Code. Ryan co-chairs the Committee on Attendance, and serves on the Committees on Scope and Program and State and Federal Relations.
Through his law practice, Ryan is also regularly appointed by multiple Courts as a “Receiver” over troubled businesses, tasked with either managing, rehabilitating, or liquidating the business for the benefit of creditors. In 2018, at the request of the Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner, the Oklahoma County District Court appointed Ryan as “Interim CEO” of Union Mutual Insurance Company, an Oklahoma-domiciled insurance company, that was successfully rehabilitated and emerged from receivership. Ryan served as Interim CEO for a period of six months during which time he identified and installed a permanent corporate leadership team. In addition, in 2019, Ryan was appointed by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to serve as Chairperson of a three-member Commission to assist the Federal Court in determining just compensation to multiple landowners in a federal eminent domain pipeline action.
In 2020, Ryan was hired by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to serve as his Special Counsel for Native American Affairs. In this capacity, Ryan assists the Governor and his administration on issues arising from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma, through which the Court ruled the Creek Nation reservation still exists within the State of Oklahoma for purposes of criminal jurisdiction.
In January 2021, as authorized by Oklahoma law, Governor Stitt designated Ryan as the lead negotiator for the state in the discussions with Oklahoma's Native American tribes to address the foundational jurisdictional issues raised by the McGirt decision.
Ryan earned his law degree from the University of Oklahoma, and graduated magna cum laude from Boston College. Ryan also attended the L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Strasbourg, France. In his spare time, he enjoys coaching his children's activities, reading history, travel and archaeology. He is the co-author of “Opala: In Faithful Service to the Law,” a biography on former Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Marian Opala, as well as "Principles and Perseverance: The Life of Don Nickles."
Ryan is admitted to practice before the Oklahoma Supreme Court and all Oklahoma state courts, the federal courts of the Western and Northern Districts of Oklahoma, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Tax Court.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig
Jennifer Weddle is the Co-Chair of Greenberg Traurig's American Indian Law Practice and has wide-ranging experience in complex regulatory and jurisdictional issues, with a focus in Indian law, handling a variety of matters for tribal and non-tribal clients. She has a dynamic, inter-disciplinary practice that centers on providing strategies for resolving complex jurisdictional problems. Much of her practice focuses in the areas of tribal economic development and natural resources development. Jennifer also has U.S. Supreme Court experience, including serving as one of the attorneys for the respondent in Nevada v. Hicks (2001) and representing the petitioners in Ute Mountain Ute Tribe v. Padilla (2012) and Grand Canyon Skywalk Development, LLC v. Grand Canyon Resort Corporation (2013) and cert stage amici in Saginaw-Chippewa Tribe v. NLRB (2016) and United States v. Cooley (2020) and amici on the merits in Lewis v. Clarke (2017), U.S. v. Washington (2018), Carpenter v. Murphy (2018), McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020), and United States v. Cooley (2021).
Jennifer's work also includes negotiations for mineral leasing employment matters and representation before federal agencies. She has also been involved in civil litigation, working on numerous complex federal, state and tribal litigation matters, including class action tort litigation and large commercial disputes. Her transactional experience includes oil and gas renewables projects throughout the west, as well as Endangered Species Act work. Jennifer frequently assists tribes, banks and non-bank entities with financing and regulatory matters with Indian law components. Jennifer has wide-ranging project siting experience, including the application of NEPA, NHPA, and other environmental laws on tribal and public lands, including with respect to large linear multi-state energy and infrastructure projects. Jennifer has deep transactional, regulatory and litigation experience involving very complex matters with both legal and policy components.
Jennifer is past President of the National Native American Bar Association and past two-term Chair of the Federal Bar Association Indian Law Section. She currently serves as the Tenth Circuit Representative on the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, a role she has held since 2018, spanning the evaluations for more than two dozen federal judicial nominees at every level of the federal courts. She is a ’00 graduate of Harvard Law School and a ’97 graduate of the University of Michigan (Classical Languages and Literature).
McGirt: One Year Later
Environmental Law & Property Rights Practice Group Teleforum
Teleforum