Education:
B.A., Harvard University
J.D., Yale Law School

 

About

Bella Sewall is an attorney at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in Washington D.C., where she focuses her practice on matters involving federal Indian law, water law, and administrative law.

She brings expertise developed during 13 years with the Department of the Interior working in several roles. While there, she served as an attorney in the Solicitor’s Office in both Washington D.C. and Knoxville, Tennessee, advising the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Geological Survey.  She acted as lead agency counsel in several cases that involved  conflict regarding transboundary water resources, including Penobscot Nation v. Mills involving tribal fishing rights and reservation boundaries in Maine and Texas v. New Mexico, an original action in the Supreme Court involving interstate water conflict and a Bureau of Reclamation project. Additionally, she negotiated the final statutory language for several legislative settlements regarding Indian water rights, and worked with the Environmental Protection Agency on their Treatment as State program for Tribes.

She has been an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law since 2014, where she teaches Federal Indian law.