Mr. Harris is the General Counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Harris joins CEI from law firm Gordon Rees, where he served as Counsel and helped clients with regulatory compliance issues and litigation. From 2018 to 2020, Harris was Special Counsel at the international law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth, LLP (Hunton). At Hunton, he represented global business clients in various legal matters, including litigation, commercial disputes, employment & labor law, and advised on regulatory compliance requirements. Prior to Hunton, in 2016, Harris was a Senior Advisor to the Secretary and the Director of OFCCP at the U.S. Department of Labor, and he was a consultant with Fulcrum IT and Government Consulting Solutions at the SEC – where he advised on Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and the JOBS Act, as well as EDGAR filing and disclosure requirements.
From 2011 to 2013, Harris served as the Executive Director of the Public Employee Relations Board of D.C., a quasi-judicial, independent agency that adjudicates labor-management disputes between government agencies and labor organizations. In 2007, Mr. Harris was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the Director of the Community Relations Service (CRS), a crisis management agency, at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). As the Director of CRS, Mr. Harris managed the Agency in carrying out its congressional mandate to work with communities across the United States in resolving conflicts and employing strategies to prevent and respond to violence and property destruction. In addition, from 2005 to 2007, he served as Deputy Chief of the Employment Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division at DOJ. Before his tenure at the DOJ, Mr. Harris was a partner at LeClairRyan and an Assistant Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Mr. Harris holds an Associate of Arts degree in liberal arts, a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Hampden-Sydney College, a Juris Doctorate from Washington & Lee University, and his data privacy certification from Cornell University.