Brian Owsley

Brian L. Owsley joined the faculty of UNT Dallas College of Law in 2015 and currently serves as an Associate Professor of Law. At the College of Law, Professor Owsley teaches Advanced Federal Criminal, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Federal Criminal Procedure, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment & Electronic Surveillance, and Torts.

Professor Owsley received his law degree from Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He served as Executive Editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. He also received a master’s in international affairs from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

After law school, he served as law clerk to the Honorable Janis Graham Jack, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas; served as Leonard H. Sadler Fellow for Human Rights Watch in New York City; and clerked for the Honorable Martha Craig Daughtrey, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. After his appellate court clerkship, he practiced with the Southern Poverty Law Center as a legal fellow in Montgomery, Alabama; the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C.; and with a private law firm in Washington, D.C., which now has merged with the international firm of Troutman, Sanders.

After private practice, Professor Owsley returned to government practice, working as a trial attorney for the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Following this period, he received an appointment as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of Texas, where he served from 2005 until 2013. With this extensive and varied practice and judicial experience, he entered law teaching in 2013. He previously taught at Texas Tech University School of Law, Indiana Tech Law School, and University of Dayton School of Law.

Professor Owsley provides commentary in national and local media on a wide range of subjects, including Criminal Law and Constitutional Law.  He publishes scholarship on a variety of topics in several legal journals, including Akron Law Review, Catholic Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Hofstra Law Review, and West Virginia Law Review as well as the online law versions of the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and University of Pennsylvania Law Review.