Former Montana Governor Steve Bullock ’94 to Speak at 2025 Columbia Law School Graduation

Steve Bullock ’94, governor of Montana from 2013 to 2021 and a champion of campaign finance reform, will address the Class of 2025 during Columbia Law School’s graduation ceremony on May 18.

As governor, Bullock, a Democrat, worked with a Republican-majority legislature to improve access to health care, reform campaign finance laws, invest in education and infrastructure, protect access to public lands, and strengthen the state’s economy. In 2015, during his first term, he signed a state campaign finance law requiring political action committees to disclose their donors and corporations with state contracts to disclose political spending. 

In 2016, when Donald Trump won Republican-leaning Montana in the presidential election by nearly 21 percentage points, Bullock was reelected to the governorship by a 4-point margin. He also led the Democratic Governors Association and National Governors Association; in 2020, he ran for the U.S. Senate. 

Before serving as governor, Bullock was Montana’s attorney general from 2009 to 2013. In that role, he argued American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock in the state’s Supreme Court in 2011, defending Montana’s 1912 law prohibiting corporate campaign spending, and gained national recognition for challenging the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which struck down limits on independent political spending by corporations. 

Since leaving public office, Bullock has served as an independent monitor overseeing Purdue Pharma’s compliance with opioid marketing restrictions and as an arbitrator over the national opioid settlements. He serves as a director on the board of the Foundation for America’s Public Lands, a congressionally authorized foundation supporting the Bureau of Land Management; on the boards of Google Public Sector and the Rodel Institute; and on the advisory board of the States United Democracy Center. Bullock is a trustee of Claremont McKenna College, from which he graduated in 1988. He also opened a brewpub, Brothers Tapworks, in Helena, Montana. 

Before entering public service, Bullock worked for law firms including Steptoe in Washington, D.C., and taught as an adjunct at the George Washington University Law School. He opened his own firm in Helena in 2004, representing labor unions, consumer organizations, police officers, and small-business owners.

Bullock has returned regularly to Columbia Law to speak to students and alumni. In 2021, he discussed the state government’s role in combating climate change with Michael Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice, on the Law School’s Defending the Planet podcast. As the keynote speaker at the 2017 launch of the successful Campaign for Columbia Law, Bullock spoke of the ways his own life and career were influenced by the Law School’s commitment to supporting students in pursuit of public interest careers.

“Were it not for Columbia’s public interest loan repayment program to help cover my student debt, I couldn’t have moved home to take care of my father and work at the [Montana] attorney general’s office,” he said. “And it was working there, as a baby lawyer, doing meaningful work that impacted people’s lives, that made me want to become attorney general, then governor.”

In addition to Bullock, speakers at graduation include Clare Huntington ’96, Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law, who is the recipient of the 2025 Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching; J.D. class speaker Amir Jones ’25; and LL.M. class speaker Rabita Madina ’25. 

“I look forward to joining my first Class Day as Dean of Columbia Law School and hearing from our distinguished lineup of speakers,” said Daniel Abebe, Dean and Lucy G. Moses Professor of Law, who joined the Law School in August 2024. “And I am especially excited to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of the Class of 2025.”