Ondray Harris joins CEI as General Counsel

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is pleased to announce that attorney Ondray Harris is CEI’s new General Counsel. Harris joins CEI from law firm Gordon Rees, where he served as legal adviser beginning in 2020 and helped clients with regulatory compliance issues as Counsel from June 2023. From 2018 to 2020, Harris worked on the federal contracting practice at Hunton Andrews Kurth, LLP as Special Counsel.

As General Counsel, Harris will oversee CEI’s legal and litigation teams. The legal team works to defend the Constitution, protect the rule of law, and bring transparency and accountability to the regulatory state. And since 1986, CEI has engaged in strategic litigation on regulatory and constitutional issues, in areas ranging from free speech to environmental mandates and health care policy to financial litigation.

“I’m excited to join CEI and lead a great team of legal scholars. CEI has a proven track record of challenging unlawful and unnecessary government barriers to ensure a freer and more prosperous country,” said Harris. “I look forward to taking on the administrative state and ensuring that our laws and regulations rest on the limited powers granted to the government by the Constitution.”

From 2017 to 2018, Harris was the Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), where he led DOL’s team enforcing and administering equal opportunity laws. Harris also served as a Senior Advisor at DOL, leading the agency’s efforts to assist states and private companies with creating apprenticeship programs.

Harris received his bachelor’s degree from Hampton-Sydney College and his Juris Doctorate from Washington & Lee University. He is licensed to practice law in Virginia and Washington, DC.

“We are thrilled Ondray Harris is joining the Competitive Enterprise Institute as General Counsel,” said CEI President and CEO Kent Lassman. “Ondray is a brilliant legal mind with extensive experience working on regulatory and compliance issues in private practice and as a federal official. I look forward to working with Ondray to eliminate unnecessary government burdens and to strengthen property rights so Americans can live in a freer, healthier, and more prosperous nation.”