Roliff Purrington

Roliff Purrington, a Virginia native, worked for over twenty years as an infrastructure and natural resources lawyer in Houston and Austin, Texas, facilitating waste, water, air, oil and gas disposal, pipeline and highway projects for private and public sector clients.

From early 2004 to mid-2006, he worked with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the US State Department as an advisor to the Iraq Environmental Ministry and as the Senior Advisor to the Iraq Ministry of Construction and Housing in Baghdad, reporting to Ambassador William Taylor and Ambassador Daniel Speckhard, respectively, the directors of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. He also served in Iraq as the Senior Consultant for Housing, Commercial Development and Employment Generation. The Iraq Ministry of Construction and Housing during his tenure consisted of the Iraq national; department of roads and bridges, the Iraq national engineering consultancy, the Iraq national housing department, and twelve state owned enterprises engaged in the construction and construction materials production sectors with operations throughout Iraq.

While serving in the foregoing positions, Mr. Purrington interfaced with senior Iraqi Government officials, the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the US Department of Transportation, the US Military, the World Bank, USAID, various NGOs, local and international private companies and embassy representatives of other countries then active in Iraq’s reconstruction.

From 2008 until 2016, Mr. Purrington worked with a team of lawyers representing a foreign government in anti-corruption litigation pending in federal court in the United States. He has also served as an adjunct professor of project management at the University of Houston.

Mr. Purrington has visited Ukraine multiple times and in 2022 and 2023 engaged in significant humanitarian fundraising activities for Ukraine, through an Austrian-based NGO dedicated to such efforts.

Mr. Purrington is a graduate of Yale University, BA, with honors, as a Yale National Scholar; the University of Virginia Law School, JD; and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, MBA, in its European program. He was awarded a Morehead Scholarship by the University of North Carolina, which he declined to attend Yale, where he lettered in varsity football at quarterback and received the Chester LaRoche Award. He was a member of Berzelius and Delta Kappa Epsilon at Yale and was elected to the Raven Society at the University of Virginia. He also holds a certificate in international arbitration from the University of Houston.

Mr. Purrington is currently affiliated with Gregor Wynne Arney, LLC, a boutique litigation law firm in Houston. In Houston, he is also a member of the James A. Baker Institute of Public Policy Roundtable.

Mr. Purrington is a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Society of Mayflower Descendants, the Jamestown Society, and the Huguenot Society of Virginia.