Steven C. Silverman

Photo of Steven C. Silverman

Steven C. Silverman

Professorial Lecturer in Law


Contact:

2000 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20052

Steven C. Silverman is the Director of the United States Department of Agriculture's National Appeals Division (NAD). As the NAD Director, he supervises a national office staff located in Alexandria, Virginia, three regional offices, and a nationwide team of administrative judges.

Mr. Silverman has spent his entire career in public service. Prior to being named Director of the National Appeals Division, he served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department of Justice. In that capacity, Mr. Silverman played a key role in the Department of Justice's handling of actions to combat climate change, uphold rules under the Clean Air Act, negotiate the Federal Government's cleanup responsibilities at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State, and respond to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Before serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General, he served as the Deputy General Counsel at the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. As Deputy General Counsel, he played a key role in helping the Forest Service promulgate a historic new planning rule to guide forest management activities on 193 million acres of National Forest System land. 

Mr. Silverman also served as the Acting General Counsel of USDA from August 2009 to January 2010. During that time, he led efforts to resolve several high profile class action civil rights lawsuits that had challenged the Department for several decades. 

Mr. Silverman began his legal career as an Honors Lawyer at the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1987. He served as a law clerk to Judge Pamela Ann Rymer in the United States District Court for the Central District of California after graduating with Distinction from Stanford Law School. Mr. Silverman earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude with a major in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a native of Des Moines, Iowa.


BA, Princeton University; JD, Stanford University