Board of Directors

Honorable John Ray
Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
District of Columbia City Council
(1979-1997)

Mr. Ray represents clients in their relations with the United States, and state and local governments, both in legislative and regulatory areas.

In the litigation field, Mr. Ray focuses on general business and corporate matters as well as civil trials. He also provides legal counsel in real estate, land use, historic preservation and general corporate law.

Mr. Ray served as an at-large member of the District of Columbia City Council for eighteen years. During that period he served as Acting Chairman and Chairman Pro Tempore of the Council and Chairman of the Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs which deals with consumer protection, business licensing and regulation, health care licensing and regulation, housing regulation, insurance, public utilities, and some aspects of banking. He also served on the Committees on the Judiciary, Economic Development, Housing, and Human Services.

As a legislator, he authored and won Council approval of some of the District's most progressive and wide-ranging reform legislation, including the first major revision of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act since shortly after Prohibition ended, a major overhaul of the District's system of licensing and regulating health care professionals and health maintenance organizations, and significant revisions and streamlining of laws affecting government regulation of corporations, rental housing, and the insurance industry.

Mr. Ray served as law clerk to Judge Spottswood W. Robinson, III of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as Assistant Counsel and Counsel to the United States Senate Antitrust & Monopolies Sub-Committee and as an attorney advisor with the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of justice.

While attending law school, Mr. Ray clerked for two and one-half years for former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas at the law firm of Fortas & Koven.

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