The Virginia Equality Bar Association


Mayme Donohue, President 

Mayme Donohue is an associate on the Capital Markets team at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP in Richmond, Virginia. In 2018 she was named one of the Top 40 LGBTQ Lawyers Under 40 by the National LGBT Bar Association. Mayme counsels clients on securities law matters, capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance issues.  She is also a member of the firm’s blockchain working group and the Associate Editor of the Blockchain Legal Resource blog.

Active in the LGBTQ community more broadly, Mayme also serves on the Junior Board of Side by Side and is deeply committed to supporting LGBTQ+ youth. In addition, she is the President of the Collegiate School Alumni Board and a member of the Collegiate Board of Trustees and also serves on the University of Richmond Law School Advisory Board.  She is committed to pro bono legal work and serves as the Co-Chair of the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society Pro Bono Hotline. 

Mayme earned her JD from the University of Richmond School of Law and her BA in Spanish from the University of Virginia.  


Elizabeth P. Redpath, President-Elect

Elizabeth focuses her practice on labor and employment. She represents clients in federal and state court at the trial and appellate level and counsels clients on a wide array of labor and employment matters.

Before joining McGuireWoods, Elizabeth was a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.  Before her time at the Department of Justice, Elizabeth clerked for Chief Judge Edward E. Carnes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and Judge Orinda D. Evans of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Elizabeth graduated with High Honors from Emory University School of Law, where she was a Robert W. Woodruff Fellow and served as a Notes & Comments Editor for the Emory Law Journal. 

Before law school, Elizabeth spent six years in sales and marketing for various companies.


Marc Purintun, Treasurer

Marc Purintun is a partner of Williams Mullen in its Richmond, Virginia office and chair of Williams Mullen's Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Practice. Marc's practice focuses on employee benefits and executive compensation. Marc has assisted several employers with employee benefit issues related to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Windsor decision striking down a portion of the defense of marriage act (DOMA). Marc regularly advises clients with respect to the benefits provided an employee’s same-sex spouse or domestic partner; including establishing domestic partner benefit policies, understanding the tax consequences of such programs, and the interplay of state and federal law relating to such arrangements. Marc is a founding board member of the Virginia Equality Bar Association and a member of the National LGBT Bar Association. Marc provides pro bono assistance to several LGBT organizations in Virginia.

He received an LLM in Taxation from Georgetown University in 2003; a JD from William & Mary Law School in 2000; and a BA in History & Religious Studies from Macalester College in 1985.





Jeff Jacobs, Secretary

Jeff Jacobs was formerly in-house counsel for Document Technologies, Inc. (DTI), a national, full-service provider of electronic discovery services, and also leads the firm’s litigation readiness consulting practice, helping organizations develop legally defensible, cost-effective Information Management (including records and email retention) policies and litigation discovery response plans.  He also serves as an expert witness in hearings and depositions on electronic discovery-related topics and conducts CLEs on litigation readiness and electronic discovery subjects. Jeff is a graduate of Williams College and the University of Chicago Law School. 

While working in Washington, DC, Jeff volunteered with the Whitman-Walker Legal Services Clinic, providing pro bono assistance on immigration and estate planning matters for people living with HIV/AIDS.  Since moving in 2009 to Richmond, where he lives with his husband, Carter Doswell, Jeff has been the President of the Richmond Log Cabin Republicans organization, in which capacity he has testified several times before the Virginia legislature in support of LGBT employment non-discrimination legislation, and spoken in numerous settings in support of LGBT equality.  He is a member of Lambda Legal and a founding director of the Virginia Equality Bar Association.




Jah Akande

Jah Akande recently graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law.  He is a native of Richmond, Virginia and attended the University of Richmond where he earned a BA in Political Science.

Jah is passionate about making a positive change in his community and has been an active member of the Pro Bono and Law & Public Service communities at UVA. He does juvenile justice work with the Child Advocacy Clinic and JustChildren and completed a two-week Pro Bono mission to South Africa on behalf of marginalized communities.  He served as education chair of UVA Law’s award-winning Black Law Students Association, working as a “bridge-builder” between underrepresented students and their professors and peers. He was interviewed by NPR about transgender discrimination in health care; worked as a volunteer on the Migrant Farmworker Project, which helps protect migrant laborers in Central Virginia from exploitation; and interned at the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond, to help indigent clients in need of defense.




Clifford "Chip" Clapp

Chip focuses his practice on criminal defense and traffic matters in Virginia, as well as various immigration matters. He has worked with the Fairfax County Public Defender’s Office as an attorney intern and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia as a law clerk, and he continues to practice in both jurisdictions.

Chip has a LL.M. in Advocacy from American University’s Washington College of Law, where he also received his J.D. He received his B.A. cum laude from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. He is a twice-published legal scholar in the Rutgers Race & the Law Review and Dartmouth Law Journal. He was published on the intersection of criminal and immigration law as well as on the intersection of drug and financial crimes, respectively. During law school, Chip served on the Executive Board of the Labor and Employment Law Forum and the Board of Directors of the Lambda Law Society.

He currently is on the board of the Alexandria Bar Foundation and has served more than a decade on non-profit boards in Florida, New York, and D.C. Chip helps teach the VEBA CLE on name and gender marker changes with Bary Hausrath and helps run the associated clinic.

Chip is licensed to practice in Virginia and the District of Columbia and speaks Spanish.



Patrick J. Fanning

Patrick Fanning is an environmental and natural resources lawyer at Troutman Sanders. His practice focuses on representing corporations, industry groups, local governments, and individuals in all aspects of environmental law, including environmental counseling, regulatory compliance, permitting, and litigation arising under the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, and state counterparts. 

In addition to serving clients at Troutman Sanders, Patrick maintains an active pro bono practice which includes serving as pro bono counsel to the Richmond region’s land conservancy, the Capital Region Land Conservancy.

Patrick earned his JD from the University of Richmond School of Law and his BA from the University of Virginia.  




Alex Lydon

Alex is a Staff Attorney at Legal Services of Northern Virginia (LSNV) who represents survivors of human trafficking in their civil legal cases. Alex started her career at LSNV in April 2015 as a domestic violence family law attorney and then transitioned to her current role as the Anti-Human Trafficking Staff Attorney in January 2018. Prior to working with LSNV, Alex worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on the trial team prosecuting the Serbian General, Ratko Mladić, for genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and other war crimes occurring during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.

 Alex graduated summa cum laude from the University of Alabama with a BA in Communication and Information Sciences and a second major in Psychology in 2012, then proceeded to the University of Richmond School of Law where she graduated in 2015 and was awarded the University of Richmond School of Law’s Harry L. Carrico Center Pro Bono Certificate for completing over 218 hours of pro bono service work while in law school. After graduation, Alex used her pro bono fellowship from the University of Richmond School of Law to begin interning in The Hague, The Netherlands for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.


Tim Lyons

Tim Lyons runs Tim Lyons Law in Los Angeles, CA and Charlottesville, VA.  Tim's practice focuses on trusts and estates.  He also handles litigation, primarily medical malpractice, personal injury and commercial disputes.  Tim is a founding member of the Virginia Equality Bar Association and a member of the National LGBT Bar Association.  Tim also volunteers his time with Legal Aid and Virginia Bar Association's Lawyers for the Arts. Tim received his B.A. in History from Harvard University, cum laude in 2004 and his J.D. from Northeastern University in 2011.  Tim worked as a litigation paralegal for a large law firm, Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr, LLP, doing patent litigation from 2006-2008 in Boston, MA and Palo Alto, CA.  Tim’s legal experience also includes clerkships for Hon. Marianne B. Bowler, U.S. M.J. (D. Mass.), the Massachusetts Attorney General, Alere Inc. (a publicly traded pharmaceutical company), and Lurie, Lent, & Friedman (a litigation firm in Boston, MA).





Ashley Matthews

Ashley is an Associate at McGuire Woods LLP in Charlottesville, VA and advises retailers and financial institutions with respect to consumer financial services, privacy and security, and governance matters. 

She counsels organizations with respect to the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Consumer Leasing Act (CLA), Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA), the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN Act) and equivalent state-level financial services, consumer protection and unfair trade practices laws. 

While earning her law degree at the University of Virginia School of Law, Ashley was a two-year recipient of the Dillard Fellowship. She also served as the president of the Public Interest Law Association, and was elected to the Raven Society. While earning her master’s degree in newspaper journalism from New York University, Ashley received a grant to participate in the Russian-American Journalism Institute. Prior to attending law school, Ashley worked as a consultant for USAID in the United States and Afghanistan, focusing on local governance development programs.


Amelia Vance

Amelia Vance is the Director of Education Privacy and a Policy Counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum. Amelia advises districts, states, academics, companies, and policymakers on student privacy law and best practices; oversees the Education Privacy Resource Center website and the review of applicants to the Student Privacy Pledge; and convenes stakeholders to ensure the responsible use of student data and education technology in schools. She is a regular speaker at education and privacy conferences in the U.S. and abroad, has testified before the House Education and Workforce Committee, and been invited to present for the U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Trade Commission. 

Prior to FPF, Amelia was the Director of the Education Data & Technology Project at the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). Amelia is a member of the Virginia State Bar and the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Amelia received her J.D. from William & Mary Law School and her bachelor’s degree from McDaniel College. In both college and law school, she was the President of the LGBT-ally student group.

(c) 2016 Virginia Equality Bar Association


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