The previous deputy secretary at the U.S Department of Interior who stepped down last month will co-chair the environment and natural resources practice at international law firm Wilmer Hale, the firm announced Nov. 1.
Tommy Beaudreau served as the Interior’s No. 2 for two-and-a-half years and occupied other roles in the department before being confirmed to the seat in 2021. Interior announced Laura Daniel-Davis, another longtime agency employee, would take over as acting deputy secretary on Tuesday.
Beaudreau will focus on large-scale energy infrastructure projects, environmental regulation and enforcement and Tribal matters in addition to leading internal investigations and responses to government investigations and congressional oversight, per his firm biography.
That work will be familiar to him, as he led responses at Interior to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in 2010 and and the near 20-year dry period threatening the Colorado River system.
Beaudreau also helped direct billions of dollars’ worth of projects for the department funded by the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The former government official previously told The Washington Post he was stepping down to spend more time with family after serving the department for nearly a decade.
Beaudreau is a graduate of Yale University and received his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
