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David M. Uhlmann is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Marten Law. Uhlmann brings more than three decades of incomparable leadership experience solving some of the Nation’s most prominent and challenging environmental enforcement issues. Uhlmann served as EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance—the top enforcement official in the United States—under President Joseph R. Biden. He is an internationally recognized expert on environmental law and a leading authority on environmental crimes. 

At Marten Law, Uhlmann represents state and local governments in their efforts to address climate change and exposure to PFAS and other emerging contaminants; renewable energy companies, utilities, and trade associations in the clean energy space; and corporate clients seeking strategic counsel regarding values-driven solutions to environmental challenges and enhanced ethics, integrity, and compliance programs.  

Uhlmann served as the EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance from July 2023 until December 2024 and as the Deputy Assistant Administrator and a Senior Advisor to the Administrator from September 2022 to July 2023, while awaiting Senate confirmation as Assistant Administrator. In those roles, Uhlmann led approximately 2,800 EPA employees nationwide responsible for enforcement and compliance assurance activities under the federal environmental laws. He revitalized EPA enforcement after more than a decade of declining budgets, securing the first budget increases since 2010, creating more than 300 new positions, and dramatically increasing enforcement across all metrics. 

Uhlmann developed National Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Initiatives for 2024-2027, including mitigating climate change and addressing PFAS contamination, and developed innovative strategies to enhance civil-criminal coordination, streamline resolution of complex environmental matters, and promote greater transparency about how EPA exercises its PFAS enforcement discretion. He led a novel, solutions-oriented approach to the Norfolk Southern litigation, which was concluded within 16 months of the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. He supervised the largest stationary source and mobile source cases ever brought under the Clean Air Act and revitalized EPA enforcement after more than a decade of declining budgets. 

Prior to his appointment at EPA, Uhlmann was the Jeffrey F. Liss Professor from Practice and the Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at the University of Michigan from 2007 to 2022. His research and advocacy interests included criminal and civil enforcement of the environmental laws, corporate accountability, and climate change and sustainability. Uhlmann testified before Congress about the use of environmental protections to address shortcomings in worker safety laws and redressing environmental harm in corporate settlements. He lectured widely about corporate crime and the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in cases involving corporate wrongdoing. Uhlmann’s views on corporate accountability for the Gulf oil spill and the VW diesel scandal, the urgency of climate disruption, and the need to promote a sustainable future have been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the American Constitution Society's Issue Briefs series, and numerous top law reviews. 

As a law professor, Uhlmann also served as Counselor to the Compliance Monitor and Independent Auditor appointed by the Justice Department and EPA in the wake of the Volkswagen diesel scandal. He served in that role for 3½ years, advising the monitor regarding the underlying misconduct at Volkswagen and corporate environmental compliance and making more than 20 presentations to the Volkswagen and Audi boards regarding environmental law in the United States, corporate accountability, and promoting environmental stewardship and an ethical culture. Uhlmann also advised investors regarding how to assess environmental liabilities in some of the most high-profile matters ever brought under the environmental laws, including the Gulf oil spill, the Anadarko-Tronox litigation, and the VW diesel scandal, and testified as an expert witness on numerous environmental enforcement topics. 

Uhlmann served from 1990 to 2007 at the U.S. Department of Justice, the last seven years as chief of the Environmental Crimes Section, where he was the top environmental crimes prosecutor in the country. He led prosecution of environmental and wildlife crimes nationwide, coordinated national legislative, policy, and training initiatives regarding criminal enforcement, and chaired the Justice Department's Environmental Crimes Policy Committee. His work as lead prosecutor in United States v. Elias, a knowing endangerment case that left a 20-year-old worker severely and permanently brain-damaged, is chronicled in The Cyanide Canary. He received numerous Justice Department and EPA awards for his precedent-setting prosecutions, including the first environmental justice criminal trial. 

Uhlmann is a fellow in the American College of Environmental Lawyers and a past member of their Board of Regents. He was named a “Conservation Hero” by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters and selected by the University of Michigan to be a Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Sustainability. Uhlmann received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. in history and political science with high honors from Swarthmore College. Following law school, he clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Marvin H. Shoob in Atlanta, Georgia.

  • EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (2023-2024)
  • EPA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and Senior Advisor to the Administrator (2022-2023)
  • Jeffrey F. Liss Professor from Practice and Director, Environmental Law and Policy Program, University of Michigan Law School (2002-2022)
  • Chief, Environmental Crimes Section, United States Department of Justice (2000-2007)
  • Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers
  • Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Sustainability – University of Michigan Law School
  • Named "Conservation Hero" by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters

  • “Who Holds Polluters Accountable When EPA ‘Pauses’ Its Enforcement Program” presented to ELPC Thinks Webinar, Environmental Law and Policy Center (May 2025)
  • “Michigan’s Environmental Crisis” presented to Lunch and Learn Speaker Series, Michigan League of Conservation Voters (May 2025)
  • Keynote Presentation, “Past Is Not Prologue: Environmental Enforcement Under President Biden and What the Future Holds Under President Trump,” 2025 Minnesota Environmental Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota (April 2025)
  • Keynote Address, The Future of Environmental Enforcement, 2025 Villanova Environmental Law Journal Blank Rome LLP Symposium, Villanova, Pennsylvania (February 2025)
  • “21st Century Environmental Challenges and Revitalizing EPA Enforcement” presented to the National Association of Manufacturers, Washington, D.C. (October 2024)
  • Featured Speaker, Steel Manufacturer’s Association, Environment Committee, Washington, D.C. (May 2024)
  • Keynote Address, American Conference Institute, PFAS Regulation, Compliance, and Litigation, New York, New York (May 2024)
  • Keynote Address, The Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies, Spring Meeting, Indianapolis, Indiana (April 2024)
  • “21st Century Environmental Challenges and Revitalizing EPA Enforcement,” ABA SEER Trends (January 2024)
  • “Back to the Future: Creating a Bipartisan Environmental Movement for the 21st Century,” Environmental Law Reporter 50, no. 10 (October 2020)
  • “New Environmental Crimes Project Data Shows That Pollution Prosecutions Plummeted During the First Two Years of the Trump Administration,” Environmental Crimes Project (October 2020)
  • “The Climate Crisis Is Still a Crisis,” The Atlantic (August 2020)
  • “BP Paid a Steep Price for the Gulf Oil Spill, But for the US a Decade Later, It’s Business as Usual,” The Conversation (April 2020)
  • “Prosecutorial Discretion and Environmental Crime Redux: Charging Trends, Aggravating Factors, and Individual Outcome Data for 2005–14,” 8 Mich. J. Envtl. & Admin. L. 297 (2019)
  • “Trump Wants to Weaken Clean Water Rules,” The New York Times (Op-Ed, December 12, 2018)
  • “The Trump Administration’s Orwellian SAFE Vehicles Rule,” ACSblog, American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (October 30, 2018)
  • “Prosecutorial Discretion and Environmental Crime: Updated Environmental Crimes Project Data,” American Bar Association (October 2017)
  • “Undermining the Rule of Law at the EPA,” The New York Times (Op-Ed, October 4, 2017)
  • "Protection of the Environment Through Criminal Law: An American Perspective," AIDP 2016 World Conference Proceedings (November 2016)
  • “Vengeance,” The New York Times (Op-Ed, October 17, 2016)

  • J.D., Yale Law School (1988)
  • B.A., Swarthmore College (1984)

  • District of Columbia Bar
  • State Bar of Georgia