Since 1980, Joel Reynolds has specialized in environmental litigation and advocacy at all levels of the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 1990, he has served as Senior Attorney, Western Director, and Senior Strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

He has led several of NRDC’s largest campaigns, including to protect the gray whale birthing lagoon and World Heritage Site at Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California, to reduce ocean noise pollution, to stop the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska, and, most recently, to defend the Gulf of California from industrialization for the production and transport of liquefied natural gas.

He has twice been selected as California Attorney of the Year (Environment) – in 2003 and 2009 – and in 2012 he was appointed NRDC’s Western Director.  Reynolds was profiled in the New York Times best seller, "War of the Whales" (Simon & Schuster 2014), and he won an Emmy for Outstanding Nature Documentary in 2017 (“Sonic Sea”). He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1978.