Ronald Tenpas formerly served as the Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, where he supervised 400 attorneys, including those responsible for all federal government environmental enforcement cases, civil and criminal. As AAG, he personally oversaw a variety of path-breaking spill enforcement matters. For example, he approved spill-related prosecutions and plea agreements that produced the largest and second-largest Clean Water Act criminal misdemeanor penalties in history, the first related to a refinery spill into an adjacent waterway and the second related to a pipeline spill. He also supervised the largest criminal vessel pollution matter for illegal vessel discharges and the first civil enforcement action under the Pipeline Safety Act, as well as numerous other multi-million dollar civil and criminal resolutions related to spills or catastrophic explosions. Mr. Tenpas subsequently joined Morgan Lewis as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office where he draws on his extensive government experience, focusing on environmental regulatory counseling and related litigation. As AAG, Mr. Tenpas worked extensively with various environmental investigating agencies such as EPA, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, the FBI, the Fish and Wildlife Service and various cooperating state and local agencies. Prior to his appointment as AAG, Mr. Tenpas served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois. During that time, Mr. Tenpas was on the Attorney General's Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys, chairing its Criminal Sentencing subcommittee. Unanimously confirmed by the Senate to both the U.S. Attorney and AAG positions, Mr. Tenpas's dual experience as Assistant Attorney General for the Environment Division and as a United States Attorney gives him unusual insight into both Washington, D.C., headquarters practices and to the approaches of various field offices. In addition, Mr. Tenpas previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Maryland and Florida, during which time he personally handled a wide-range of investigations and personally tried many criminal cases to a jury verdict. He has testified before Congress on multiple occasions, on matters ranging from environmental enforcement to health care fraud, to insider trading, to identity theft. He has both written and spoken extensively on government enforcement practices. In addition to various spill-related matters, as AAG Mr. Tenpas oversaw all other aspects of the Justice Department's environmental enforcement program, including cases related to air and water permit violations, hazardous waste matters, and Superfund cost-recovery. During his tenure, he oversaw the largest civil environmental settlement in history, involving alleged violations of the Clean Air Act, as well as the largest environmental bankruptcy matter in history, involving the government's assertion of more than $2 billion dollars in clean-up claims and natural resource damages. He has experience across a range of industries, including energy, transportation, shipping, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing. As AAG, he also supervised the defense of United States interests in various natural resource matters, such as water rights, as well as under such statutes as NEPA, the Endangered Species Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act. As AAG, he personally argued matters in which he defended the United States Navy's use of sonar in off-shore training exercises as well as successfully argued to reverse a district court's dismissal of an vessel pollution criminal indictment, in which the district court had invoked a novel use of international treaty law. Mr. Tenpas received the Secretary of the Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award and the Edmund J. Randolph Award, the Justice Department's highest service honor. At the beginning of his career, Mr. Tenpas served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia law school, where he was editor-in-chief of the law review. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and has his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University.