Samuel e. Hutchinson

Sam Hutchinson has over 40 years of experience in real estate development and finance, and government relations. He serves as legal counsel for numerous privately owned and government owned entities. He is regularly retained to represent clients on HUD matters. Mr. Hutchinson has a distinguished national reputation and has had an outstanding career in federal service. He was a member of the government’s Senior Executive Service (SES) at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from August 1994 through January 2010. During this period, he was the highest ranking African-American career executive in the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) nationwide. He served as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of HUD; Deputy General Counsel for Operations (Acting), and Associate General Counsel for Human Resources Law. As Deputy General Counsel, he oversaw a $93 million annual budget and directed operations covering over 700 employees in HUD’s Washington, DC, and ten (10) Regional Offices across the country.

During his tenure at HUD, Mr. Hutchinson was also a key legal advisor to several former HUD Secretaries, including Jack Kemp, Henry Cisneros, Andrew Cuomo, Mel Martinez, and Alphonso Jackson. As the Associate General Counsel, he supervised three highly specialized legal divisions in ethics law, public integrity, compliance with federal criminal statutes, employment law, and federal procurement and contract law. He was also an advisor to several Presidentially appointed sub-cabinet level officials in preparation for Senate confirmation on housing and community development issues, HUD policy matters, conflicts of interest, transition issues, divestitures, and financial disclosure requirements. He served as Director of Personnel, overseeing a national workforce of 10,000 employees. He supervised payroll and budget operations, collective bargaining, and he managed a successful nationwide downsizing initiative that resulted in substantial savings to HUD and incorporated program consolidation, buyouts, and employee re-training.

Mr. Hutchinson has considerable expertise in establishing public policy and addressing major issues related to housing, public housing, fair housing, and community planning and development. Throughout his career at HUD, he counseled Assistant Secretaries in several Administrations and high level Regional Officials having oversight of HUD’s (10) Regional Offices and (61) Field Offices across the nation. Mr. Hutchinson was HUD’s key senior legal official on matters pertaining to intergovernmental relations, contract awards, procurement integrity, and the Agency’s initiatives for restoring accountability and transparency in the annual disbursement of over $42 billion in federal programs and housing assistance.

In August of 2000, Mr. Hutchinson was awarded the coveted Presidential Rank Award for outstanding leadership and achievement from former President Bill Clinton. This award is among the highest bestowed for civilian government service. During the administration of President Barack Obama, Mr. Hutchinson served as Senior Advisor to Ron Sims, former Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He was also an advisor to the interim Provost at Howard University and a lecturer on fair housing and fair lending at the Howard University School of Law.
Mr. Hutchinson holds a Bachelor of Science and a Juris Doctorate from Howard and completed the Senior Managers in Government (SMG) program at Harvard.