Woods Nominated as New GC at the Department of Energy

Department of Transportation deputy general counsel Gregory Woods has been nominated to serve as general counsel of the Department of Energy.

A partner at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York from 2004 to 2009, Woods was a member of the firm's corporate finance and Latin American practice groups before moving to DOT.

He’s being tapped to fill the spot left vacant when Scott Blake Harris joined Neustar, Inc. in March as head of legal and external affairs. The DOE job requires U.S. Senate confirmation.

About 150 lawyers work in DOE headquarters. The GC’s workload includes everything from administrative law to Freedom of Information Act requests to national security issues. Two of the stickiest issues will be ongoing litigation over the Obama administration's decision to pull the plug on the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, and the Hanford “downwinder” case.

About 1,350 plaintiffs remain in the 21-year old suit, brought by residents near the now-shuttered plutonium production complex who claim that radiation from the plant gave them cancer and other diseases.

Woods earned his J.D. from Yale Law School. From 1995 to 1998, he was a trial attorney at the Department of Justice, where he litigated fraud cases.