Former Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Eric Grant has returned to private practice at Houston litigation firm Hicks Thomas after nearly four years at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Hicks Thomas name partner John Thomas said Grant will be an “enormous asset” to firm clients as they prepare to navigate the Biden Administration’s regulatory priorities.
“His DOJ experience will allow us to respond to fast-moving developments in energy and the environment,” Thomas said in a statement. “The Biden Administration is already on record with plans to beef up environmental prosecutions.”
At the DOJ, Grant supervised the Environment Division’s Appellate Section, the Indian Resources Section and, most recently, the Environmental Defense Section. He said he began eyeing a return to private practice in anticipation of a change in presidential administrations.
“It didn’t take long to choose to rejoin Hicks Thomas in favor of big national firms,” said Grant, who clerked for former Chief Justice Warren Berger and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas early in his career. “The talent and dedication of my colleagues is no less than that of big-firm lawyers, and the opportunities to work on high-stakes litigation in Texas and across the country are here as well.”
Grant said the work that kept him the most busy while supervising the Environmental Defense Section was defending the Environmental Protection Agency’s rulemakings and permitting decisions in the appellate courts – particularly those under the Clean Air Act – as well as defending the EPA’s interpretation of “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act and enforcing the Act in trial courts around the country.
Two of his highlights while at the Environment and Natural Resources Division involved major pipeline projects.
Grant was the lead lawyer in the government’s successful petition for certiorari and ultimate victory in U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Ass’n in defense of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
In litigation related to the Keystone XL Pipeline that spanned a Montana federal district court, the Ninth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, Grant led the team that obtained “extraordinary relief” for his clients in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Northern Plains Resource Council.
In his earlier tenure at Hicks Thomas, Grant successfully defended clients in litigation involving the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and other environmental contamination claims.
Grant says clients should expect a “momentous shift” in the energy and environmental space from rulemaking to permitting to enforcement, particularly with climate-related issues.