Professional Overview
Josh supports a range of mixed-use and public-private developments, conservation transactions and other projects with external-facing concerns. He helps clients comply with local permitting processes as well as Washington's State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), Shoreline Management Act (SMA), Growth Management Act (GMA) and other statutes.
Josh is passionate about un-sticking difficult problems and enjoys helping diverse coalitions to structure and execute creative solutions. He advocates before regulators and in appeals, and he has advised infrastructure authorities, hospitals, schools, nonprofits and government agencies on governance, transactions and risk-management issues. In his legislative practice, he has drafted multiple bills on housing and environmental matters that went on to be enacted into law.
Before law school, Josh served as an aide to the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, where he worked with agencies, nonprofits, lawmakers and legislative staff to advance the Obama Administration's environmental priorities. More recently, he took leave from law practice to work as staff on the 2020 Biden-Harris presidential campaign, and then served as a volunteer ethics counsel to the 2020 Presidential Transition, where he helped incoming Biden Administration nominees and appointees comply with conflict-of-interest and public disclosure requirements.
Representative Matters
- Development and permitting of light-rail stations, affordable housing projects, behavioral health facilities, renewable energy facilities and other potentially controversial projects.
- Saved nonprofit senior housing client over $200,000 in permitting fees for a single project through strategic structuring of application submissions.
- Guided church client successfully through complex and contentious rezone process.
- Enabled development of new advanced manufacturing facility by developing and executing strategy for amendment of dysfunctional preexisting site permits.
- Represented community college in multiple appeals of city permitting actions.
- Represented public health provider in over $140 million of tax-exempt and taxable construction and acquisition financing.
- Negotiated long-term adaptive reuse agreement for leasehold, historic restoration and management of County-owned interpretive site.
- Represented museum in sale of transferable development rights to for-profit developer.
- Represented high-net-worth individuals and families in negotiating and executing donations of complex private landholdings to conservation nonprofits.
Articles and Presentations
Moderator, "“Amazon Housing Equity Fund: Social Impact from Private Sector Investment in Affordable Housing,” Pacific Northwest Multifamily Forum, Oct. 2024.
Professional and Civic Involvement
- Washington Conservation Action and Washington Conservation Action Education Fund - Political Committee Chair, Executive Committee Member
- Port of Seattle Board of Ethics - Chair
Honors / Awards / Prior Experience
- Associate (Land Use and Real Estate Transactions), Davis Wright Tremaine, Seattle, 2017 - 2021.
- Repeatedly recognized by Best Lawyers in America®: Ones to Watch in the fields of Land Use & Zoning Law, most recently for 2025.
- Repeatedly recognized as a "Rising Star" by Washington Super Lawyers, most recently in 2024.
- Special Assistant, Council on Environmental Quality at The White House, Washington, D.C., 2012 - 2014.
- Legislative Assistant, UPS Corporate Public Affairs, Washington, D.C., 2011 - 2012.
Education
J.D., Harvard Law School
- Winter Clerk, Seattle Mayor’s Office (2017)
- Editor, Harvard Environmental Law Review
B.S., Tufts University, summa cum laude
- Elected to Phi Beta Kappa
Personal
Josh enjoys exploring the outdoors across Washington State, volunteering and gardening.