SELC Names Senior Attorney Cale Jaffe as Director of Charlottesville Office

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) is pleased to announce that Senior Attorney Cale Jaffe will lead SELC’s future efforts in Virginia as the new director of its Charlottesville office.

SELC uses the power of the law to protect the health and environment of the Southeast. With offices in six states (Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama), SELC is headquartered in Charlottesville.

“Cale Jaffe is an extraordinary lawyer and multi-faceted leader, with stellar credentials and a strong track record of success,” says Rick Middleton, SELC founder and director.

A graduate of Yale and UVA Law School, Cale began his career clerking for judges on the U.S. District Court and U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was with McGuire Woods in Richmond prior to joining SELC in 2004, and he has been a lecturer at the UVA law school for the past seven years.

Cale was on the SELC legal team that secured a unanimous decision for clean air from the U.S. Supreme Court. He is respected as an environmental leader by legislators in the Virginia General Assembly. Cale’s major focus over the past seven years has been promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy sources in Virginia, while also playing a central role in shelving the proposed ODEC plant near the Chesapeake Bay. He is currently heading the effort to keep Virginia’s longtime ban on uranium mining.

“SELC for over a quarter-century has brought its legal, policy, regulatory, and legislative expertise to bear on the goal of improving the quality of the environment. Virginia Environmental Endowment has been one of its supporters since the beginning,” said Gerald McCarthy, executive director of the Virginia Environmental Endowment. “I commend Rick Middleton and the SELC Board of Directors for their wise choice in developing its leadership in Virginia and for selecting Cale Jaffe to lead the Virginia efforts going forward.”