Bryan Dearinger joined the law faculty in 2023 after serving the University for nine years as both an Associate General Counsel and an adjunct professor of law.  He currently teaches Legal Research and Writing I and II, Legal Profession (Ethics), Professional Sports Law, Sports Law: Pathways to Practice, and Controversies in Constitutional Law.   He also serves as the Director of the Summer Sports Law Institute.

Prior to his arrival at UO, Professor Dearinger spent ten years in federal courts, primarily as a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.  At DOJ’s Federal Programs Branch, Professor Dearinger represented the United States, the President of the United States, federal agencies, and government officials in affirmative and defensive civil litigation, including constitutional litigation, Administrative Procedure Act litigation, national security litigation, privacy litigation, and the enforcement of various federal statutory and regulatory schemes.  His work included, for example, litigation of First Amendment speech and religion cases; litigation on behalf of agencies as wide ranging as the EPA, FBI, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Transportation; handling U.S. Territories, Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and state secrets litigation; and litigating national security cases—including, for example, representing the United States in the various statutory and constitutional challenges to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs in the wake of the disclosures by Edward Snowden.  Before entering the DOJ through the Attorney General’s Honors Program, Professor Dearinger served for three years as a judicial law clerk for federal judges in Seattle, Washington, and Cheyenne, Wyoming.  While in law school, he worked for Legal Aid Services of Oregon. 

Professor Dearinger has litigated in over a dozen federal district courts across the country and has also authored articles published in the St. John’s Law Review and the Oregon Law Review. His research interests focus on litigation with state and federal governments, primarily as it concerns bail reform, sovereign immunity, the Article III justiciability doctrines, and reallocations of judicial decision making authority and legislative power.  An emerging area of his research is in sports law—in particular, the regulation of college athletes.  His latest article, UnconstitutioNIL: Name, Image, and Likeness State Laws in the Post-Amateurism World of College Sports, is forthcoming in the American University Law Review.

In December 2018, the judges of the United States District Court in Oregon selected Professor Dearinger as a Ninth Circuit Lawyer Representative for the District of Oregon (2019-2022 term).  Lawyer representatives are chosen by federal judges in each of the Ninth Circuit’s fifteen districts and work closely with the federal bench and bar to improve the administration of justice in the Circuit.  In April 2020, Professor Dearinger was selected by then-Chief Judge Marco Hernandez to serve as Co-Chair of the Ninth Circuit Lawyer Representatives for the 2020-2022 term. 

Professor Dearinger is the current President and a Board Member of the Oregon Chapter of the Federal Bar Association (FBA) and has also served as a volunteer Attorney Ambassador for the FBA's Free Federal Law Clinic. The clinic serves persons without financial or legal resources, primarily assisting unrepresented (pro se) litigants with civil matters filed in federal court in Oregon. Professor Dearinger is active with both the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) and the Legal Writing Institute (LWI), and currently serves on ALWD’s Scholarly Publications Committee and LWI's Teaching Resources Committee. In 2023, Professor Dearinger was appointed to the University's Intercollegiate Athletics Advisory Committee; he is chair the committee for the 2024-25 academic year.  He also fills a faculty member seat on the University of Oregon Police Department's Officer Complaint Review Committee.

Professor Dearinger earned his J.D. from Drake University Law School, where he attended on a Public Service Fellowship, graduated Order of the Coif, and was Editor-in-Chief of the Drake Law Review.  He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Portland, where he was also an NCAA Division I athlete.

References for Students