Grant Tolley

Grant is a senior associate in the Washington, DC office of Vinson & Elkins and a member of the firm’s Environmental & Natural Resources practice. He represents clients across diverse sectors on a range of complex litigation and regulatory matters arising under the major federal environmental statutes. His clients have included automotive companies, oil and gas companies, utilities, developers, and manufacturers.

Grant has a particular focus on the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) stationary and mobile source regulatory regimes. He has counseled stationary source clients on complex issues involving the preconstruction permitting requirements of the PSD/NSR programs, Title V permitting, and Section 114 information requests. He has counseled mobile source clients on disclosure of auxiliary emission control devices (AECDs) pursuant to EPA’s audit policy, Section 208 information requests, and compliance with EPA and CARB requirements for vehicle emissions certification. Additionally, he served three years as a member of the court-appointed monitorship overseeing Volkswagen’s compliance with civil and criminal settlements resolving the $33 billion Dieselgate emissions cheating scandal. Through this work, he has developed a keen insight into Environmental Management Systems (EMS), the automotive production process, and US and EU vehicle emissions certification requirements.

During law school, Grant served as a law clerk for the US EPA, where he worked on Clean Air Act mobile source enforcement matters. Additionally, he worked as a student attorney in Georgetown’s Environmental Litigation Clinic, where he prepared an amicus brief in support of EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule Update in a challenge pending before the D.C. Circuit.

At Yale, Grant wrote his master’s thesis on nutrient cycling in secondary tropical forests and conducted field research in Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico. He also served as a teaching fellow for Tropical Forest Ecology, participated in the Yale Law Environmental Clinic, and worked as a forester at the Yale School Forests.