Ray Treadwell departs Governor's Office to join Lawson Huck Gonzalez

Ray Treadwell, who’s been the chief deputy general counsel to Gov. Ron DeSantis, has joined the law firm of Lawson Huck Gonzalez, the firm told City & State on Wednesday. He'll be in the Tallahassee office. 

Treadwell was one of the longest serving insiders of the administration, starting during the governor’s 2019 transition. He’s a 2011 Yale Law School graduate; his now-former boss attended Yale University as an undergraduate. 

“Ray certainly has the exceptional skill, breadth of experience, professionalism, and integrity to provide our clients with the highest level of service and wise counsel,” said Alan Lawson, the firm's founding partner and a former justice of the Florida Supreme Court. 

In a statement, Treadwell added: “I am thrilled to join the premier Lawson firm where I can immediately put my private and public experience to use. What they are building will resonate in this state’s legal market for many years to come.” 

After graduating from the University of Florida as an undergraduate and attending law school, Treadwell was a law clerk in Jacksonville for U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard, then practiced at Holland & Knight and Shutts & Bowen, according to his LinkedIn page. 

He later was general counsel at the Department of Business and Professional Regulation – where his new firm said he was “integral to the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic to limit the impact on regulated industries” – before moving to the Capitol. 

There, he worked “to defend many of the governor’s priorities,” the firm said, including the Seminole gaming compact, the Parental Rights in Education Act, the governor’s suspension of Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren and the reorganization of Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District into the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. 

Treadwell also has taught courses on judicial power and emergency litigation at the University of Florida and Florida State University law schools.

Lawson Huck Gonzalez launched earlier this year and immediately snagged a bevy of "top government and corporate clients," according to a Florida Politics story, including the Department of Management Services, HCA Healthcare Florida, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida Power & Light and Publix Supermarkets. It now has offices in Tampa and South Florida, as well as the state capital.