B&D Caps Year of Growth with Two New Lawyers in Quarter 4

After a year of continuous growth for the firm, B&D ended 2024 with the addition of two lawyers in our Washington, DC office. Please join us in welcoming Of Counsel Justin Smith and Associate Peter Selimos.

“2024 was a year of many successes for our clients and unprecedented growth for our firm. Having Justin and Peter join our team at the end of the year was a wonderful punctuation mark on an extraordinary year,” said Firm Chair Kathy Szmuszkovicz. “We look forward to seeing their contributions to our clients and our firm and are excited for what 2025 has in store.”

R. Justin Smith

With two decades of experience at the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Environment & Natural Resource Division (ENRD) across multiple administrations, Justin offers strategic counsel on multiple regulatory programs, legislation, and litigation. At ENRD, Justin served as Chief of the Law and Policy Section. As one of ENRD’s most senior career officials, he worked with Senate-confirmed appointees across multiple presidential administrations on all facets of environmental law and litigation. Justin draws from his distinguished career and government and leadership roles in the environmental bar to help clients work through high-stakes and complex issues such as climate change, Tribal sovereignty, and natural resource management. His DOJ work involved extensive work with novel regulatory issues and advice to many federal agencies on litigation risk issues. With extensive litigation experience, Justin’s leadership at DOJ extended to coordinating the federal government’s amicus participation in precedent-setting environmental cases and advocating for innovative enforcement remedies.

E. Peter Selimos

As a part of B&D’s litigation practice, Peter helps represent clients facing a variety of high-stakes matters across jurisdictions. Recent examples of his work include assisting a team with preparations for oral argument before the Federal Circuit and conducting legal research related to active federal litigation involving a novel Endangered Species Act (ESA) claim. Before joining B&D, Peter clerked for both levels of federal trial court. During these clerkships, Peter drafted over forty substantive judicial orders—including an eighty-six-page order on the merits of claims involving Clean Water Act dredge-and-fill permitting, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the ESA.