PERSON: Paul Dans

Director of 2025 Presidential Transition Project

I am a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and received both my undergraduate and masters degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I served in the Trump Administration as Chief of Staff and White House Liaison at the Office of Personnel Management and also as a Senior Advisor in the Office of Community Planning and Development at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In January 2021, President Trump appointed me to a six year term as Chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission.

Prior to entering public service, I practiced commercial litigation in New York City for 20 years at several large international firms (Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; Leboeuf, Lamb Greene & MacRae LLP) and at my own firm. I am the intellectual architect of the Chevron outtakes case, a landmark litigation wherein Chevron subpoenaed documentary movie outtakes as evidence to unravel a $27 billion fraud being perpetrated against the company and its executives in Ecuador. My work on the case was the subject of a profile in American Lawyer magazine and a book about the epic litigation. I have served on the steering committee of the New York City Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society and as a member of the Media and Communications Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association.

I have been active in Republican politics and conservative movements since law school. I was president of the University of Virginia Law School Federalist Society Chapter in law school. I worked on the Trump campaign in Allegheny County, PA in the warroom for the 2016 election. I speak French and received a certificate in French Law from the University of Paris II Pantheon-Assas in 1996. I am married with four young children and reside with my family in South Carolina.

[Https://www.rnla.org/pedans]