Austin Raynor

Austin Raynor is a senior attorney and special counsel to PLF’s Supreme Court practice. He helps craft PLF’s Supreme Court strategy across all three practice groups: Separation of Powers, Property Rights, and Equality and Opportunity. He has extensive experience before the Supreme Court, having argued eight cases and filed over 150 briefs there on a wide range of issues of national significance. 

Before joining PLF, Austin spent five years in the U.S. Department of Justice as an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General, which represents the United States in the Supreme Court. He helped draft the government’s brief in support of the landowner in the seminal takings case Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid. He was also previously a litigator at an international law firm, where he maintained a broad practice representing clients at all stages of the case lifecycle, from pretrial proceedings through appeal. He began his law career by clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  

Austin has published numerous articles and columns advancing personal liberty and limited government, including Economic Liberty and the Second-Order Rational Basis Test, 99 Va. L. Rev. 1065 (2013) and The New State Sovereignty Movement, 90 Ind. L.J. 613 (2015). He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif, and his B.A. summa cum laude from the College of William and Mary.  

Austin lives in Virginia with his wife and four young children. He is a student of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and enjoys outdoor pursuits like hunting, hiking, and camping. 

Austin is a member of the bar only in Washington, DC and Virginia (inactive).