Friday, July 14, 2006
Page 3
Former Sheppard Mullin Partner Roy Wuchitech Named Deputy General Counsel for Department of Defense
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The U.S. Department of Defense has named former Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP partner Roy Wuchitech to the post of deputy general counsel.
Wuchitech, who retired from Sheppard Mullin on June 30, was initially contacted by General Counsel Jim Haynes and appointed after interviewing with a number of government officials including Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, he told the MetNews.
He is scheduled to start his new position on August 7.
As deputy general counsel, Wuchitech will supervise the legal team handling environmental law and defense department installation matters.
His responsibilities will encompass the defense department’s use, development and management of the country’s natural and cultural resources; its use and management of real property worldwide; its compliance with environmental laws; and the cleanup of hazardous waste contamination.
Wuchitech, 60, expressed enthusiasm about the opportunity to serve another U.S. president.
He previously left Sheppard Mullin six years into his partnership to serve by appointment under the Reagan administration, from 1986 to 1987, as assistant general counsel for special litigation in the Department of Energy and deputy general counsel of the Air Force, and under the first President Bush as acting general counsel of the Air Force in 1989.
After his political appointments, Wuchitech returned to Sheppard Mullin and spent 16 years developing his specialty in environmental law and complex civil litigation, as partner in its Real Estate, Land Use and Environmental Practice Group and head of its Environmental and Military Base Realignment and Closure Practice Group.
His experience includes defending Exxon Mobil Corporation in its MTBE and underground storage tank litigation throughout California, and defending the Department of Energy in an EPA suit and class action attacking the DOE’s allegedly environmentally harmful conduct in Ohio.
Wuchitech was admitted to the bar in 1972 and received his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law, cum laude, in 1972. During law school, he was a member of the Texas Law Review and interned with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston.
He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1967.
Copyright 2006, Metropolitan News Company