Trump-Targeted Covington Hires President’s Ex Regulatory Chief (1)

A Heritage Foundation analyst and former regulations czar from President Donald Trump’s first term announced a move to Covington & Burling Wednesday.

Paul J. Ray said on LinkedIn he began a new role as of counsel in the Washington DC-based firm’s public policy practice group. He spent more than three years as the director of Heritage’s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and in a senior role at advisory firm Patomak Global Partners, according to his profile.

“I am excited to join Covington’s exceptional bipartisan team of former government lawyers and advisors, and I look forward to helping clients navigate regulatory policy in Washington,” Ray said.

In a statement, the foundation said “deploying” its personnel like Ray to work in the private sector or in government is a “core component of our culture.”

“Paul Ray was an exceptional and valuable contributor on the Heritage team,” the foundation said. “Another brilliant conservative legal mind serving at a top-tier firm is a win for the American people.”

Ray joins at a time when law firms seek to build out their roster of conservatives under the Trump administration. Trump has targeted law firms for, among other things, alleged partisanship in the matters they choose to take on. He revoked the security clearance of Covington partner Peter Koski in late February because of his representation of former special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two criminal cases against the president. Other firms who were targeted have chosen to capitulate to the administration or sue them. Covington thus far has not addressed the executive memo against it.

Ray spent more than three years in the first administration of President Donald Trump. He began as a counselor for labor secretary Alexander Acosta before joining the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the agency within the White House Office of Management and Budget responsible for reviewing federal regulations, in May of 2018.

He occupied multiple senior roles in White House’s budget office before President Trump nominated him to be the OIRA’s administrator in 2019.

“From his positions in OIRA, Paul helped develop, craft, and defend some of the most important regulatory policies of the first Trump administration, and his expertise will be valuable to clients seeking to navigate regulatory policy today,” said Kim Breier, a co-chair of Covington’s public policy practice, in a prepared statement.

At Heritage Foundation, Ray published articles discussing the limits of regulatory versus legislative power and criticizing health agency vaccination mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also oversaw the formulation of the foundation’s economic and regulatory policy recommendations, according to his new profile on Covington’s website.