Robert E. Curry, Jr. was appointed Commissioner of the New York State Public Service Commission on June 22, 2006. His term runs through February 1, 2012. A member of the Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), he is also Vice-Chair of the Department of Energy/NARUC LNG Partnership.
Immediately prior to his appointment, Mr. Curry was a lawyer in private practice, with an emphasis on corporate governance and transactional work. During his legal career, Mr. Curry has been a partner at several law firms, including Heller Ehrman, Sonnenschein, and Dickstein Shapiro. In addition to his law firm experience, he served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Covanta Holding Corporation (formerly Odgen Corporation) during its transformation from a Fortune 150 industrial company to a Fortune 50 services company.
At Covanta and thereafter, Mr. Curry had extensive involvement with PURPA projects in renewable generation, both in hydro-electric and refuse-to-energy, and with the transportation of LNG and other petroleum products. Mr. Curry has also worked in the field of offshore exploration and production of hydro-carbons in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, while in private practice, he represented for a number of years a thrift subject to regulatory scrutiny, as well as one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting and consulting firms.
A member of the Board of Advisors of the Columbia Law School Center on Corporate Governance since 2004, Mr. Curry has spoken at the ALI – ABA Corporate Governance Institute and the annual meeting of the National Association of Corporate Directors, as well as numerous programs at NARUC and in the industry. Mr. Curry has served on the New York State Bar Association’s Special Committee on Preserving the Core Values of the Legal Profession and as General Counsel of The Foundation for Early Lung Cancer Detection. Mr. Curry also was a Co-Founder, and thereafter President, of the Metropolitan New York Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel.
Mr. Curry received his law degree from Columbia University School of Law and his Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, from Georgetown University. He and his wife Margaret have a daughter, Bevin and a son, Rob.