Eric A. Grant

Before rejoining the Hicks Thomas team in 2021, Eric Grant spent the previous four years as the federal government’s top appellate lawyer for energy and environmental litigation. As a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) of the U.S. Department of Justice, he supervised the lawyers who defended a wide range of permitting decisions related to pipelines and other projects, as well as the lawyers who prosecuted Clean Water Act claims against private defendants.

For example, as ENRD’s top lawyer on the case, Mr. Grant spearheaded the government’s successful petition for certiorari (and its ultimate victory) in U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Ass’n, 140 S. Ct. 1837 (2020), in defense of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. On two occasions, he led the teams that ran the gamut from the district court to the Ninth Circuit to the U.S. Supreme Court to obtain extraordinary relief in high-profile cases — involving the Keystone XL Pipeline and “kids against climate change.”

Mr. Grant adds that recent litigation experience, expertise, and inside knowledge to three decades of top-level legal practice that includes arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous other federal and state appellate courts.