The Honorable Ronald J. Tenpas was appointed the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the U.S. Department of Justice on May 30, 2007 and was subsequently confirmed by the Senate to serve permanently as Assistant Attorney General.
As Assistant Attorney General, he oversees all environmental litigation involving the United States arising under more than 150 federal statutes. These statutes include the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, CERCLA (Superfund), the Endangered Species Act, NEPA, and many others. The Division’s work spans affirmative suits to stop polluters and recover clean-up costs; defending federal agencies in their administration of federal programs, including management of federal lands and other natural resources; defending federal regulatory agencies that issue environmental regulations; litigation relating to tribes and their lands; and condemnations of federal land for public uses. The Division has about 400 lawyers and annual expenditures in excess of $160 million.
Mr. Tenpas has worked in the Department for a number of years, serving as Associate Deputy Attorney General; as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois; as an Assistant United States Attorney and Branch Chief in the District of Maryland; and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Florida in Tampa, Florida, starting in 1997. He is former law clerk to the Honorable Louis Pollak, EDPA, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
Mr. Tenpas received an International Relations degree from Michigan State University in 1985. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oxford University where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, receiving a degree in 1987. After Oxford he attended the University of Virginia Law School from which he graduated in 1990, and where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Law Review. |
