David R. Hill is the General Counsel of the United States Department of Energy (DOE).  President Bush nominated Mr. Hill to this position on April 14, 2005; he was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 28, 2005, and sworn in by Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman on August 10, 2005.

As General Counsel, Mr. Hill is responsible for providing legal advice, counsel and support to the Secretary of Energy, the Deputy Secretary of Energy, and principal Secretarial officers at the Department.  He is charged by the Secretary of Energy with the authority to determine the Department’s authoritative position on any question of law, and is the Department’s Regulatory Policy Officer.

Prior to becoming General Counsel, Mr. Hill served as Deputy General Counsel for Energy Policy at DOE from March 2002 to August 2005.  Before joining the Department, Mr. Hill was a partner in the Kansas City, Missouri law firm of Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin, and before that was a partner with Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington, D.C.  In private practice, Mr. Hill’s work covered a wide range of regulatory, litigation and corporate matters, including regulatory matters before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal and state agencies.  Earlier in Mr. Hill’s career, he served as a law clerk for Judge James K. Logan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, was an associate at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, and served as associate counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture.

Mr. Hill is a native of Missouri and received his bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Missouri-Columbia College of Agriculture in 1985.  He received his law degree with honors in 1988 from the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Northwestern University Law Review.