Biography
In 1984, when I was sixteen years old, I enrolled at the best college in the world, Dartmouth. Although I couldn’t use my R.O.T.C. scholarship at Dartmouth, during my sophmore year I enlisted in the Navy Reserve, and served for the next eight years until I was honorably discharged. My major activities at Dartmouth were Freshman Football and Sigma Nu fraternity. I graduated in 1988, with a double major in History and Philosophy.
My next stop after Dartmouth was law school, at the University of Virginia. I graduated in 1992. At graduation, I was awarded the Margaret G. Hyde Award, the highest award conferred by the Law School.
After law school, I worked for two federal judges. The first was Judge David B. Sentelle on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The second was Justice Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court of the United States, which is commonly–yet wrongly–called the highest court in the land. (As Supreme Court clerks know, the highest court in the land is the basketball court above the courtroom in the Supreme Court!)
After I left the Supreme Court, I spent the next six years in private practice in Washington, D.C. For most of that time, I was an associate attorney at Sidley & Austin, one of the country’s leading litigation firms and one of the premier appellate boutiques in Washington. My practice focused on civil, criminal, and constitutional litigation in state and federal courts across the country, including the Supreme Court.
For the last seven years, I have been a law professor at the University of Virginia. I teach criminal law, criminal procedure, and appellate advocacy. I was awarded tenure in 2005. Last year, I was named the John V. Ray Research Professor.
I serve on a variety of boards and commissions. From 2000-04, I served as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Reviewing Authority, having been appointed to that post by then-U.S. Education Secretary Rodney Paige. I have been twice elected by my county board of supervisors to serve as a community representative on the Police Citizens Advisory Committee. I have served on the Executive Committee of the Charlottesville/Albemarle United Way, and currently am serving a second term on its Board of Directors. I also serve on a number of other nonprofit boards, including the local chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and the local YMCA, and was recently reelected as an officer and elected a director of my local Rotary Club.
While at Dartmouth, I met my wife on a fraternity “road trip” to a nearby college. We were married my junior year. We have five children–all boys!–the first of whom was born during my senior year at Dartmouth. We live in a rural area outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.
