Robert Odle

Robert Odle during the Nixon administration

Robert C. Odle, Jr. is a former public official and an American lawyer, based in Washington, D.C..

Odle joined the Washington office of the New York-based law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP in 1985, and retired from Weil on February 23, 2015 after thirty years of service as a partner. Mr. Odle represented clients on a wide range of matters before the United States Congress, and agencies, departments, boards and commissions of the Government of the United States. In addition to his work on major policy issues including corporate governance, energy, the environment and housing, he served, and continues to serve (now pro bono), as counsel to charitable foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He also continues to serve pro bono as the general counsel of the Richard Nixon Foundation at the presidential library in Yorba Linda, California.

Prior to joining Weil, Odle served as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE). Nominated by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the United States Senate in 1981, his responsibilities included DOE's legislative, public, intergovernmental and consumer affairs programs, Office of Competition, and the environmental, health and safety compliance of DOE facilities including the nation's nuclear installations. He also served as the principal adviser to the United States Secretary of Energy in the formulation and review of national energy policy. Odle was also appointed by President Reagan to the Task Force for Legal Equality of Women in 1981.

Prior to his DOE appointment, Odle was Washington Representative for the International Paper Company. From 1973 to 1976, Odle served as Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

From 1969 to 1971 Mr. Odle was a Staff Assistant to President Richard Nixon, and from 1971 to 1973, Director of Administration of the Committee for the Re-Election the President. As the administrative director of the Committee, he was the first witness to testify at the Senate Select Committee's 1973 televised hearings regarding the Watergate matter (Watergate Committee), explaining the organizational structure of the Committee for the Re-Election the President. He praised "President Nixon and the million volunteers across the nation and 400 people at national headquarters who did nothing unethical or illegal." Odle testified about contact he had with James McCord, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and G. Gordon Liddy, and particularly H. R. Haldeman and Attorney General John N. Mitchell.

Mr. Odle is a member of the District of Columbia and Michigan Bar Associations. He is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Reagan Alumni Association, the Federalist Society, the Republican National Lawyers Association , the President's Club of the Heritage Foundation, the President's Cabinet of the Richard Nixon Foundation, the University Club of Washington, the John Carroll Society, Saint Mary's Church in Alexandria, Virginia, the Review Board of the Diocese of Arlington, and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

He studied law at Michigan State University (formerly the Detroit College of Law), where he graduated in the class of 1969, after receiving a Bachelor's Degree from Wayne State University.

He resides in Alexandria, Virginia and Oxford, Maryland, with his wife, Lydia, and their son, John Paul.