The Campaign Legal Center: About Us

The Center's staff, guided by the Center's board of directors, lead the Campaign Legal Center in pursuit of its mission.

Center Staff

J. Gerald Hebert
Executive Director and Director of Litigation

For the past ten years, Gerry Hebert has had an active federal court litigation practice specializing in redistricting and voting rights issues and has worked on cases in more than two dozen states. Over the last three decades, he has served as legal counsel for parties and amici curiae in numerous redistricting lawsuits, including several cases decided in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Prior to his time in solo private practice, Mr. Hebert served in the Department of Justice from 1973-1994 in many supervisory capacities, including Acting Chief, Deputy Chief, and Special Litigation Counsel in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division.

Mr. Hebert will remain an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, in Washington, D.C., where, since 1995, he has taught courses on voting rights, election law, and campaign finance regulation. In 1998, he co-taught a course on voting rights law at the University of Virginia School of Law with Professor Pamela Karlan. In 1995, he also taught election law at the American University's Washington College of Law.

He has authored a number of law journal articles and other publications on redistricting and the Voting Rights Act. His most recent publications include "Redistricting in the Post-2000 Era", in the George Mason University Law Review, and "The Realists' Guide to Redistricting", published by the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice (co-authored).

Paul S. Ryan
FEC Program Director & Associate Legal Counsel

Paul S. Ryan joined the Campaign Legal Center in October 2004. He has specialized in campaign finance, ethics, and election law for more than eight years and is former Political Reform Project Director at the Center for Governmental Studies (1999-2004) in Los Angeles. Mr. Ryan directs the Campaign Legal Center's Federal Election Commission (FEC) Program and regularly represents the Campaign Legal Center before the Commission. Mr. Ryan also litigates campaign finance issues before federal and state courts throughout the United States. He is one of the nation's leading experts on public campaign financing and local government campaign finance law and has published extensively on these topics. His publications include a forthcoming article in the Stanford Law & Policy Review entitled Wisconsin Right to Life and the Resurrection of Furgatch (Spring 2008); a chapter in Lobbying, Government Relations, and Campaign Finance Worldwide, Oceana Publications, Inc. (2006); Investing in Democracy: Creating Public Financing of Elections in Your Community, Center for Governmental Studies 2003, Beyond BCRA: Cutting Edge Campaign Finance Reform at the Local Government Level, the National Civic Review 2003, and A Statute of Liberty: How New York City's Campaign Financing Law is Changing the Face of Local Elections, Center for Governmental Studies 2003.

Mr. Ryan has testified as an expert on election law before numerous legislative bodies and government ethics agencies, including the Federal Election Commission, the California State Legislature, the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the New York City Council, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. Mr. Ryan has also spoken on the topics of campaign finance and ethics laws at conferences around the nation, has appeared as a campaign finance law expert on news programs of CNN, NBC and other media outlets, and has been quoted by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Roll Call and other news publications.

Mr. Ryan is a member of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws ( COGEL ) model law committee and has co-authored COGEL's forthcoming publication, A Model Law for Campaign Finance, Ethics and Lobbying Regulation. He is also a former member of the board of directors of California Common Cause. Mr. Ryan is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law's Program in Public Interest Law and Policy (2001) and the University of Montana (1998), and is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, the State of California, the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Meredith McGehee
Policy Director

Meredith McGehee is the Policy Director at the Campaign Legal Center where she directs the legislative and media policy efforts. She is also the principal of McGehee Strategies, which specializes in public interest advocacy campaigns. McGehee is the former President of the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a public interest group that sought to put meaning back into broadcasters' statutory obligation to serve the public interest.

Formerly Senior Vice President and Chief Lobbyist for Common Cause, McGehee was named by The Hill as one of the top nonprofit/grassroots lobbyists in Washington. She has given talks at universities and organizations around the country, has testified before Congress, has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Village Voice, Salon, Broadcasting & Cable, The Washington Times, Des Moines Register and numerous other newspapers, and has appeared on CNN, NBC, ABC and a variety of television and radio news shows.

Prior to joining Common Cause, McGehee was Legislative Director for U.S. Representative Lane Evans of Illinois and a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Dante Fascell of Florida. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, West Africa and is a Phil Beta Kappa, cum laude graduate of Pomona College in California.

David Vance
Director of Communications and Research

David Vance oversees public and media outreach efforts and research projects for the Campaign Legal Center. Mr. Vance has an extensive background in public relations and in both broadcast and print journalism. Prior to joining the Campaign Legal Center, Mr. Vance served as Public Affairs Director for an international trade association and worked for two public relations firms in Washington, DC where he handled public affairs, public relations and crisis issues both nationally and internationally for a broad range of corporate, association and non-profit clients.

Before entering the public relations field, Mr. Vance worked for several news bureaus in Washington, DC, WCAX-TV in Burlington, Vermont as well as The Washington Post. At various points in his journalism career Mr. Vance covered national, state, and local politics, the courts, crime and business. Mr. Vance has researched and written series on numerous political candidates, a variety of industries and the long and short-term effects of state and national legislation.

Mr. Vance is a native of Washington, DC and holds an M.S.J. from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from George Mason University.

Marianne Holt Viray
Grants Administrator

Marianne Holt Viray has been with the Campaign Legal Center since its creation in 2001. She has worked in non-profits and conducted academic research on money and politics for the past five years. Ms. Viray is the author of multiple published works on soft money in the 1998 congressional elections, interest group activity in elections, election law reform, and the federal government's mandate in election administration. Ms. Viray has appeared on CNN, MSNBC and ABC and has been quoted by The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and other media outlets.

Ms. Viray is a former Senior Associate at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan public interest watchdog. During her time at the Center she directed two research projects focusing on the changing nature of campaigns, campaign finance laws and the section 527 organizations during the 2000 election. She also trained over 100 reporters nationwide regarding increasing and improving coverage of campaigns, produced dozens of reports addressing interest group issue advocacy, campaign finance disclosure and related legislation for the Center's award-winning newsletter and researched The Buying of the President (Avon Press, 2000).

Ms. Viray managed a national academic research project during the 1998 election cycle with campaign finance expert, David Magleby at Brigham Young University. Ms. Viray has a degree in political science from Brigham Young University.

Tara Malloy
Associate Legal Counsel

Ms. Malloy joined the Campaign Legal Center as associate counsel in November 2006. She litigates a wide range of campaign finance cases at the state and federal level, as well as researching campaign finance, ethics and redistricting issues. Ms. Malloy has extensive experience in practical campaign finance enforcement, having served as an associate counsel at the New York City Campaign Finance Board prior to joining the Campaign Legal Center. There, she advised the Board regarding the administration of New York City's public financing system, served as Board counsel at administrative penalty hearings, and drafted legislation and implementing rules. She was also responsible for representing the Board in state and federal courts on various campaign finance matters, including permissible uses of public matching funds, disclosure requirements and the regulation of coordinated expenditures.

Previously, Ms. Malloy worked in the litigation practice at the New York law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton. A former Fulbright Scholar, Ms. Malloy is a graduate of Yale Law School and Emory University.

Krystin Borgognone
Program Assistant

Krystin Borgognone joined The Campaign Legal Center in the fall of 2007. Ms. Borgognone works closely with program directors and carries out a combination of program research, writing and human resource duties.

Ms. Borgognone was a legislative project assistant in the government affairs department at Dickstein Shapiro, LLP, where she conducted legislative and political research and arranged congressional conferences for clients. She has previously interned at the office of Representative Vito Fossella (R-NY, District 13), and served as a legal research intern and legal secretary at The Capitol Area Immigration Rights Coalition (DC) and at the law firm Duskin & Crowe (Staten Island, NY). She also worked for nearly two years as assistant to the editor at the National Italian American Foundation in Washington, where she translated and contributed to the newsletter and magazine.

Ms. Borgognone graduated cum laude from The Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University (2007) with Bachelor's degrees in Italian Studies and International Affairs.

Frances Hill
Tax Program Director

Professor Frances R. Hill consults with the Campaign Legal Center as its Tax Program Director.

Professor Hill is a professor of Law and the Director of the Graduate Tax Program at the University of Miami. Professor Hill earned her Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University and her J.D. at the Yale Law School. She is the co-author with Douglas M. Mancino of Taxation of Exempt Organizations.

Much of Professor Hill's scholarship and public policy activities involve the use of exempt organizations as campaign finance structures. In June 2000 she testified before the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee on legislation that amended Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code to require disclosure of contributors and expenditures to the Internal Revenue Service for political organizations that do not report to the Federal Election Commission.

Professor Hill is a member of the Disclosure Task Force established by the Campaign Finance Institute. She served as an advisor to the Urban Institute's Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy in organizing a series of ten Roundtable Discussions on Advocacy Activities of Nonprofit Organizations.

Trevor Potter

Trevor Potter was the founder of the Campaign Legal Center and has served as its President and General Counsel. Mr. Potter is currently on a leave of absence from these positions at the Campaign Legal Center.