Gregory J. Battista

Gregory J. Battista leads Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP's environmental practice group.  Greg advises clients on environmental matters relating to mergers and acquisitions, financing transactions, and debt and equity offerings.

Greg has over 35 years of experience handling environmental matters, including those related to risk analysis, federal and state compliance, remediation and corporate transactions. He regularly advises clients in a variety of areas including: EHS compliance and litigation matters, site investigation and clean-up, SEC disclosure, sustainability strategy and reporting, climate change regulation, government enforcement and administrative proceedings, OSHA matters, auditing, supply chain and ESG risk, real estate development projects, and due diligence with respect to financing, M&A and other corporate matters.

Commended in Chambers USA by clients as “very responsive, very smart and very practical,” “the voice of reason” and “knows how to prioritize what should be prioritized,” and lauded in The Legal 500 US as “one of the most experienced environmental lawyers in the US today,” Greg has been recognized as a leading environmental lawyer by Chambers USA, The Legal 500, International Who's Who of Environmental Lawyers and Euromoney’s Expert Guides. In 2023, Greg was recognized as a USA Thought Leader in the Environment edition of Who’s Who Legal and named a leading lawyer in The Lawdragon Green 500 Leaders in Environmental Law and recognized by The Best Lawyers in America for his expertise in Environmental Law and Litigation – Environmental.

Greg is a member of the Advisory Board of The CSR Group LLC, a consulting firm serving clients in the areas of ESG and sustainability.

He is currently an adjunct professor of Environmental Law at Seton Hall University School of Law, where he teaches courses on regulation under the Federal Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Superfund/CERCLA, RCRA, and New Jersey ISRA and Spill Act, and has served as adjunct professor of Environmental Law and Management at Stevens Institute of Technology.  He is a previous member of the Leadership Council of the Environmental Law Institute and served on the Editorial Board of Environmental Liability Journal (Lawtext UK), from 2005 to 2010.

Earlier in his career, Greg was General Counsel of LRN Corporation, a Senior Environmental Attorney at an AMLaw100 firm, a Deputy Director for the New Jersey Hazardous Waste Facilities Siting Commission and an Assistant Director at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.