David M. Uhlmann

David M. Uhlmann is a nonresident senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution, a visiting professor of law at The George Washington University Law School, and a partner at Marten Law. He previously served as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance from July 2023 until December 2024. Prior to his Senate-confirmed position at the EPA, he served as the Jeffrey F. Liss Professor from Practice and the director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at the University of Michigan Law School and as the chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at the United States Department of Justice.

Uhlmann is an internationally recognized expert on environmental law and the leading authority on criminal enforcement of the environmental laws in the United States. His research focuses on corporate accountability, climate disruption, and sustainability; his advocacy efforts emphasize the need to reclaim bipartisan support for environmental protection, climate action, and environmental justice. Uhlmann has published in the Michigan Law Review, the Harvard Environmental Law Review, the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, the Maryland Law Review, the UC Davis Law Review, the Utah Law Review, and the Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law. He has written for The Atlantic and the American Constitution Society, and he has authored multiple op-eds for The New York Times on topics including the Gulf oil spill, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, and the Flint water crisis.

As EPA assistant administrator, Uhlmann led approximately 2,800 employees nationwide responsible for enforcement and compliance assurance activities under federal environmental laws. Uhlmann developed National Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Initiatives for 2024 to 2027, including mitigating climate change, addressing PFAS contamination, and limiting exposure to coal ash contamination. Uhlmann established the first-ever EPA Climate Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Strategy, the Strategic Civil-Criminal Coordination Policy, and the PFAS Enforcement Discretion Policy for CERCLA Cases. He revitalized EPA enforcement after more than a decade of declining budgets, securing the first budget increases since 2010, creating more than 300 new positions, and dramatically increasing enforcement across all metrics. Uhlmann previously served as deputy assistant administrator from February 2023 to July 2023 and as senior advisor to the administrator from September 2022 to February 2023.

Before joining EPA, Uhlmann was the Jeffrey F. Liss Professor from Practice and the inaugural director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at the University of Michigan Law School from 2007 to 2022. He led the efforts of more than 400 Michigan Law students who participated in the Environmental Crimes Project, the first comprehensive empirical study of criminal enforcement under U.S. pollution laws. His first article regarding the Environmental Crimes Project, “Prosecutorial Discretion and Environmental Crime,” received honorable mention as the top environmental law article of 2014. In addition, Uhlmann chaired the Dow Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program and Distinguished Faculty Fellows in Sustainability.

While at Michigan, Uhlmann served as counselor to the Compliance Monitor and Independent Auditor appointed by the Justice Department and EPA in the wake of the Volkswagen diesel scandal. He served in that role for three and a half years, advising the monitor regarding the underlying misconduct at Volkswagen and corporate environmental compliance and making numerous presentations to the Volkswagen and Audi boards regarding environmental law in the United States, corporate accountability, and promoting environmental stewardship and an ethical culture. He also testified before Congress about the use of environmental protections to address shortcomings in worker safety laws and redressing environmental harm in corporate settlements.

Uhlmann served from 1990 to 2007 at the U.S. Department of Justice, the last seven years as chief of the Environmental Crimes Section, where he was the top environmental crimes prosecutor in the country. He led an office of approximately 40 prosecutors responsible for the prosecution of environmental and wildlife crimes nationwide, coordinated national legislative, policy, and training initiatives regarding criminal enforcement, and chaired the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Policy Committee. His work as lead prosecutor in United States v. Elias, a knowing endangerment case that left a 20-year-old worker severely and permanently brain-damaged, is chronicled in The Cyanide Canary. He received numerous Justice Department and EPA awards for his precedent-setting prosecutions, including the first environmental justice criminal trial.

Uhlmann is a fellow in the American College of Environmental Lawyers and a past member of their Board of Regents. He was named a “Conservation Hero” by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. Uhlmann received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. in history and political science with high honors from Swarthmore College. Uhlmann clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Marvin H. Shoob in Atlanta, Georgia.