Dollar Tree Taps New Legal Chief After Ex-Trump Official Exits

Dollar Tree Inc. has appointed an interim top lawyer following the discount retail chain’s elevation of a new chief executive.

John Mitchell Jr., a senior deputy general counsel at Dollar Tree, is now also its corporate secretary, the company said in a proxy statement filed May 2. He replaces Janet Dhillon, a former Republican member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the Trump and Biden administrations, who joined Dollar Tree in November as its chief legal officer and corporate secretary.

Mitchell is now serving as Dollar Tree’s acting general counsel, Derek Redmond, a vice president of corporate governance and assistant corporate secretary for the company, told Bloomberg Law. Mitchell is a former partner at Williams Mullen, where he was outside counsel to Dollar Tree prior to moving in-house at the Chesapeake, Va.-based company in 2021.

Dollar Tree didn’t disclose a reason for Dhillon’s departure—a spokeswoman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Dhillon also didn’t didn’t respond to a request for comment. The former top lawyer at Burlington Stores Inc. chaired the EEOC during the Trump administration.

She left Dollar Tree in February, according to her LinkedIn profile, a month after the variety store owner appointed Rick Dreiling as its new chief executive.

Dreiling joined Dollar Tree as chairman last year as part of an activist investor’s shakeup of the company’s board. That led to a broader reshuffling of Dollar Tree’s C-suite, which last summer parted ways with longtime former legal chief William Old Jr. Dollar Tree is now on its third top lawyer in less than a year.

Gabriel Jaime-Bettan, a litigation and investigations counsel at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York, has been on secondment to Dollar Tree since last summer. Jaime-Bettan is now serving as Dollar Tree’s acting chief compliance officer, Redmond said.

Edward “Ned” Kelly III, a former Davis Polk partner and retired chairman of Citigroup Inc.’s investment banking business, is a lead director at Dollar Tree. The company’s most recent proxy statement reveals that Kelly received more than $588,000 in total compensation last year.