W&L Law Alumnus to Head American Bar Association

Robert J. Grey Jr. '76L

Robert J. Grey Jr., a 1976 alumnus of Washington and Lee University's School of Law and a highly regarded Richmond attorney, will become the 128th president of the American Bar Association (ABA) on August 9 at the association's annual meeting in Atlanta.

Grey will serve a one-year term at the helm of the ABA, which, with 410,000 members, is the largest voluntary professional group in the world representing practicing and academic attorneys nationwide.

He will succeed Dennis W. Archer, a former Michigan Supreme Court justice and mayor of Detroit. Archer, who assumed the office in 2003, was the first African-American to serve as president of the powerful bar association.

A former member of W&L's Law Council, Grey is the first ABA leader from Washington and Lee University's School of Law since Lewis F. Powell Jr. held the post from 1964-65. The late U.S. Supreme Court justice also was a Richmond attorney and member of Hunton & Williams law firm, who earned bachelor and law degrees from W&L in 1929 and 1931, respectively.

Grey is the sixth ABA president educated at Washington and Lee University's School of Law, which ranks third in the number of attorneys it has trained who have risen to the ABA presidency since 1878. W&L and the University of Michigan are tied in the ranking behind Harvard and Columbia, with 18 and 10 ABA presidents, respectively.

Additionally, two other attorneys affiliated with Washington and Lee have headed the ABA, most recently including R. William Ide III, a 1962 alumnus who served as ABA president in 1993-94.

As one of Virginia's most prominent attorneys, Grey's legal practice focuses on administrative matters before state and federal agencies; counseling businesses with concerns before elected and appointed government officials, both in Virginia and nationally; and mediation and other forms of dispute resolution on a state and national level.

Grey made ABA history in 1998 when he became chair of the association's policy-making House of Delegates, the ABA's second-highest ranking office. Grey was the first African-American to rise to such prominence within the ABA, which he also has served as a member of the Board of Governors, the Governance Committee, the Standing Committee on Legal Aid & Indigent Defendants, the Strategic Planning and Priorities Committee and the Advisory Council on Diversity in the Profession.

In the two years prior to becoming president-elect of the organization, Grey devoted his ABA work to chairing the Committee on Research about the Future of the Legal Profession, which identified sweeping trends affecting American law and recommended possible approaches to upholding the rule of law and the profession's values in the face of these changes.

A longtime Richmond resident, Grey is active in numerous community organizations, including his service as chair of the Greater Richmond Partnership and the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce.