Joel Reynolds

Western Director, Senior Attorney, Marine Mammals, Oceans Division, Nature Program

NRDC’s principal institutional representative in the West, Joel Reynolds joined the organization as a senior attorney in 1990, after a decade with the Center for Law in the Public Interest and the Western Center on Law and Poverty, both in Los Angeles. Since 1980, he has specialized in complex law-reform litigation, arguing cases on behalf of environmental and community groups at all levels of the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also led several of NRDC’s largest campaigns: to preserve the birthing lagoon of gray whales in Baja California; to protect the California State Park at San Onofre; to reduce underwater noise pollution that threatens ocean wildlife; and, most recently, to halt the construction of the environmentally destructive Pebble Mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. From 1986 to 1990, Reynolds was an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California Law Center. Since 2012, he has served as chair of the Tejon Ranch Conservancy, one of California’s largest land trusts. His articles and editorials appear frequently in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, and other major media outlets. A graduate of Columbia Law School in 1978, Reynolds is based in Santa Monica.


This website provides general information, not legal advice. If you need legal help, please consult a lawyer in your state. Joel Reynolds does not hold themself out as a specialist in a particular area of law or law practice.

Related content