Paul Seamus Ryan joined the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation as Deputy Executive Director in April 2022. He has specialized in election law and policy and nonprofit management for more than 20 years and previously served as Vice President for Policy & Litigation at Common Cause (2016-22), Deputy Executive Director of the Campaign Legal Center (2004-16) and Political Reform Project Director at the Center for Governmental Studies (1999-2004).

Paul has litigated campaign finance issues before federal and state courts throughout the United States, has drafted election laws, and has published extensively on the subject of election law in journals including the Stanford Law and Policy Review and the Harvard Journal on Legislation, and through public policy reports and white papers.

Paul has testified as an expert on election law before Congress, the Federal Election Commission and state and municipal legislative bodies and ethics agencies. Paul has lectured at universities and conferences around the nation. For more than two decades Paul has provided consultation and assistance to elected officials, government agency staff and grassroots activists regarding government ethics, campaign finance and other election policy development. He has appeared as an ethics and election law expert on news programs of CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, C-SPAN, NPR and other media outlets, and is quoted regularly by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Roll Call and other news publications.

Paul is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law’s Program in Public Interest Law and Policy (2001) and the University of Montana (1998), and is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, the State of California, the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.