UK Law Welcomes Visiting Faculty for Spring 2019 Semester

Jan. 10, 2019  The University of Kentucky College of Law welcomes three visiting faculty members for the Spring 2019 semester:  Gayle W. Herndon, Les M. MacRae and James C. Smith.  Additionally, two visiting faculty members, Cyra A. Choudhury and Ryan A. Valentin, continue to serve in their year-long post.

Gayle W. Herndon
Visiting Professor of Law

Gayle W. Herndon is teaching Corporate Tax and International Tax.  He previously served as a Faculty Practitioner at UK Law during Spring 2015.  He retired from the practice of law after serving 25 years as Tax Counsel – Tax Policy and Planning for the General Electric Company in Fairfield, Connecticut. Previously, he served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, and as an attorney and accountant at various private firms. Professor Herndon is a 1982 Coif graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law.

Leslie M. MacRae
Visiting Professor Law

Leslie M. MacRae is teaching Trusts & Estates and Land Use Planning. After 28 years at Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, MacRae became a professor emeritus of law in 2011.  He began his career at Penn State in 1983 and taught administrative law, agricultural law, animal law, environmental law, land-use law, natural resources law, property law, trusts and estates, and Native American law.  From 2003 to 2005, MacRae served as director of the Agricultural Law Resource and Reference Center and on the Maurice K. Goddard Chair Advisory Committee.

Professor MacRae earned his juris doctor degree from Baylor in 1973, a Master of Laws degree from the University of Miami School of Law in 1977, and a Master of Laws degree from Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1983.  He began his legal career in private practice in his hometown of Waco, Texas, and then served as Assistant Attorney General of the Marine Resources Division in Maine and the Natural Resources Division in Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Virginia in 1971.

James C. Smith
Visiting Professor Law

James C. Smith is teaching Property and Secured Transactions. He is the John Byrd Martin Professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, where his courses include Property, Real Estate Transactions, Secured Transactions, Housing Law, Water Law and Real Estate Development. He has authored or co-authored four casebooks and a treatise in the areas of real property law, conveyance and taxation. He earned his juris doctor degree from the University of Texas.

Cyra A. Choudhury
Visiting Professor of Law

Cyra Choudhury continues her one-year role as a Visiting Professor of Law.  She is teaching Contracts I and II, as well as a seminar in Islamic Law.  She taught Family Law during the Fall semester.  Her expertise is in international and comparative family law; gender and postcolonial theory; subjectivity and legal theory; and international labor law and labor migration.  She is a Professor of Law at Florida International University.

Professor Choudhury graduated with a juris doctor degree (cum laude) and LL.M from Georgetown University Law Center. She received an MA in Comparative Politics from Columbia University focusing on women, religion and South Asia. She earned her bachelor’s in political science from The College of Wooster where she won the Frank Miller Prize in Comparative Politics, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated second in her class.

Ryan Valentin
Visiting Faculty Member

Ryan A. Valentin continues as a visiting faculty member to teach legal research to first-year law students.  Previously, he served on UK Law’s faculty as Head of Public Services from 2008-2016.  Before his first stay at UK Law, he clerked for Judge Douglas S. Mitchell of the Lane County Circuit Court in Eugene, Oregon, and practiced law in Florida.  Professor Valentin earned a juris doctor degree from the University of Oregon in 2004 and an MLIS from Florida State University in 2007.

Valena E. Beety is Professor of Law at the University of West Virginia College of Law, where she also serves as Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project. She was a Visiting Professor of Law at UK Law during the Fall 2018 semester and taught Criminal Law and a Criminal Law Procedure seminar.  Her scholarship and teaching interests include criminal procedure, causes of wrongful conviction, prisons, and policing.  Professor Beety is creator, and serves as the inaugural director, of WVU’s LLM program in Forensic Justice.