Areas of Emphasis
Boyd Stephenson is an associate in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office and a member of the Transportation Safety, Emerging Technologies and Energy and Natural Resources groups.
Mr. Stephenson’s practice includes representing clients nationwide in a variety of pipeline, trucking and hazardous materials matters, including before the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), and the Transportation Security Administration. He advises clients on pipeline interpretive and compliance matters, incident response, enforcement proceedings, and rulemaking comment preparation. Mr. Stephenson has drafted and filed regulatory comments to agencies at the Department of Transportation and Department of Homeland Security and to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget. He has drafted multiple successful preemption petitions with PHMSA regarding state or local laws that impeded hazardous materials transportation. He also designs and leads trainings to help clients comply with the hazardous materials regulations.
As the former senior attorney at a national trade association, Mr. Stephenson is conversant in matters related to nonprofit trade organization management including drafting bylaws, board of directors training, fundraising, copyright, and campaign and election law.
Background
Mr. Stephenson earned his J.D. cum laude from the George Mason University School of Law in May 2016. He graduated from Davidson College in 2003 with a B.A. in Political Science.
Prior to joining Babst Calland, Mr. Stephenson spent more than a decade working for two national trucking trade associations, primarily representing motor carriers in the hazardous materials and tank-trailer segments. Earlier in his career, he worked on political campaigns in Arkansas and Florida and in the government affairs office of a worldwide, multimodal parcel delivery company.
Memberships and Affiliations
Mr. Stephenson is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Virginia and before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia. He is not admitted to the Washington, D.C. Bar. Mr. Stephenson is currently practicing in D.C. under the supervision of D.C.-licensed attorneys and has applied to the D.C. Bar for admission. He is a member of the Virginia Bar Association and of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice.
He previously served as a member of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Entry-Level Driver Training Federal Advisory Committee and the Department of Homeland Security’s Critical Infrastructure Advisory Committee. He also sat on the Department of Homeland Security’s Highway-Motor Carrier Sector Coordinating Council Federal Advisory Committee, chairing it from 2009-2012. He has served on two National Academy of Sciences project panels, overseeing research into regional disaster response planning and the transportation of hazardous materials. Mr. Stephenson was a director of the Council on the Safe Transportation of Hazardous Articles from 2012-2019.