ATA’s Top Lobbyist Lynch to Join Law Firm

This story appears in the June 28 print edition of Transport Topics.

Tim Lynch, American Trucking Associations’ top lobbyist, said last week he would leave the federation in July to join a Washington, D.C., law firm’s government affairs department.

In a June 21 e-mail to ATA staff, Lynch said that “with a somewhat heavy heart” he had taken a position with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

Lynch, who had served as ATA’s vice president for legislative affairs from 1993 to 1997, returned in 2005 as senior vice president of federation relations and strategic planning.

In between stints with ATA, Lynch was president of the Motor Freight Carriers Association, which represented unionized less-than-truckload fleets.

Lynch told Transport Topics that Morgan, Lewis “decided that they would very much like to provide a full menu of services to their clients including government relations and they’ve not done that in the past.”

Part of his decision, he said, was the opportunity to create a government affairs department from the ground up.

During his time at ATA, Lynch said he was most proud of the federation’s preparations for congressional efforts to reauthorize highway spending legislation and of ATA’s efforts to improve its environmental image.

“For all the years that I’ve been involved with the industry, because of what the membership wanted to do, I think they really positioned themselves very well to have the proverbial seat at the table on reauthorization,” he said.

The industry, Lynch said, “has done a really good job positioning itself on environmental issues.”

“We are not viewed as simply saying no, but being able to project a very positive agenda that also worked to perhaps take the wind out of the sails out of some proposals that would have been very damaging to the industry,” he said.

Lynch said he expected transportation issues still would occupy much of his time, but that other issues such as labor, taxes, energy and health care will “afford it an opportunity to really grow.”

“We’re going to hopefully turn that into a strength of the firm,” he said of transportation.

Though he’s going to a law firm, Lynch is not a lawyer even though he once pursued that career path.

“I’m going there as a non-lawyer, so I’m planning on writing to all the law schools that rejected me in 1975 and saying ‘Ha, I still made it in working for a law firm,’ ” he said.

Lynch said that it was still uncertain when he’d officially leave ATA, but that it would probably be in mid-July.