Dylan Russell is a partner in Hoover Slovacek LLP’s appellate and litigation sections. He has been Board Certified in Civil Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 2017 and was recertified in 2022. Only about 400 attorneys licensed in Texas currently hold this certification, out of over 100,000 licensed attorneys. Now in his 21st year of practice after joining the firm as a law clerk in 2002, his focus is on complex appeals and trial litigation. 

In his appellate practice, he has presented over 25 oral arguments in state and federal appellate courts. He has argued 5 times to the Fifth Circuit, including twice in 2022, once to the Second Circuit in New York, and 4 times to the Supreme Court of Texas, as recently as 2023. During the 2022-2023 term, Mr. Russell had 5 petitions for review granted by the Supreme Court of Texas, 3 of which were consolidated for oral argument in September 2022 and another was set for oral argument in March of 2023. Since 2015, Mr. Russell has had 12 petitions, including 2 petitions for writ of mandamus, granted by the Supreme Court of Texas, including a petition for review set for oral argument in March of 2024. When he has been respondent in the Supreme Court of Texas, no petitioner has had their petition granted. In 2021 and 2023, Mr. Russell briefed two petitions for a writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. One asked whether state-court judgments confirming arbitration awards, including state-court orders clarifying such judgments, are “judicial proceedings” entitled to “full faith and credit in every court within the United States,” pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1738. The other asked whether a defendant, in an FHAA discrimination case, must know of the disability “at the time” a reasonable accommodation is requested and denied or whether the knowledge can be acquired later, before any judgment is entered. As to Texas’s mid-level appellate courts, Mr. Russell has argued many times to the First and Fourteenth Courts of Appeals in Houston and the courts of appeals in Waco, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Beaumont, and Tyler. In addition to the courts mentioned above, he has briefed cases in the courts of appeals in El Paso and San Antonio. Mr. Russell has also briefed two bankruptcy appeals, presenting oral arguments in one of them to the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division. Mr. Russell has also attended trials as appellate counsel in federal district courts in Fort Worth and Houston and in a bankruptcy adversary proceeding in Fort Worth. 

In his most recent argument before the Supreme Court of Texas, Mr. Russell argued on behalf of a mortgage lending company that sued its prior law firm for legal malpractice in an appeal under the Texas Citizens Participation Act (Texas’s anti-SLAPP statute), resulting in the unanimous Court reversal of the Tyler Court of Appeals, which reinstated the trial court’s order denying the law firm’s motion to dismiss. 

In his trial practice, Mr. Russell has tried cases as first chair in Harris and Montgomery Counties, including several jury trials in Harris County. He appeared in numerous federal and state district courts in counties throughout Texas, including in Harris, Montgomery, Fort Bend, Galveston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Liberty, Bexar, Travis, Brazoria, Williamson, Burnet, Hardin, Lubbock, Brazos, Denton, and El Paso counties, among others. Mr. Russell also has appeared in federal courts and in state courts, pro hac vice, in states such as Florida, Missouri, New York, Connecticut, and Oklahoma.