Partner
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Adam is the co-leader of McGuireWoods’ Crisis Management & Incident Response and Environmental Enforcement & Regulatory Counseling practice groups. Fortune 500 companies and other entities turn to Adam when they face major legal and reputational risk in environmental, health, and safety (“EHS”) criminal, regulatory, and civil proceedings. With more than 27 years of experience—in roles such as an EPA enforcement attorney, a general counsel with an international manufacturing company and a private practice lawyer—he has helped clients manage bet-the-company environmental matters in all media, including water, air and waste. Adam is described as “very smart, great with strategy and also great working with regulators” by Chambers USA (2024). He has been recognized by Chambers for the last 14 years and is ranked in Band 1 in Georgia for Environmental Law. Other market recognitions include being named a “Georgia Trailblazer” for his work in crisis management by The Daily Report. Adam leads the response and investigation of catastrophic accidents, fires, explosions and spills, and he handles environmental crisis management matters, such as criminal and civil inspections and investigations. Over the past several years, he helped clients recover more than $2 billion in insurance proceeds to rebuild post crisis. Adam defends clients in government inquiries following an EHS crisis, such as investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and state and local regulatory agencies. He also counsels on matters involving emerging contaminants, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”). Adam was the lead attorney in one of the first major regulatory matters involving PFAS contamination from a major PFAS manufacturing facility that impacted a municipal wastewater treatment plant, including the investigation of a three-county area in Northern Alabama impacted by biosolids from the wastewater plant. Adam is an author and frequent speaker on environmental compliance and enforcement issues, including co-authoring the “EPA Compliance and Enforcement Answer Book” published by PLI in 2013 and 2015 and serving as a contributing author for the LexisNexis Practice Guide: “Georgia Environmental Law” published in 2022.
