Harrell has been at EPA for 40 years and has focused on criminal enforcement since 1988, after starting his career in civil enforcement and the agency’s then-new Superfund cleanup program. In September 2006, he was one of nine federal employees who received the prestigious Service to America medal—the EPA’s first winner of a “Sammie.” Harrell was honored for investigating and prosecuting an international chemical broker who filled a three-story downtown warehouse in eastern Pennsylvania with aging and unusable chemicals and then shipped and abandoned 300 tons of those chemicals in the Netherlands to avoid Superfund cleanup costs.
He spent 2003-2004 prosecuting firearms, drugs, and environmental crimes full time in the US Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia. During his career, he has served as a part-time special assistant US attorney in the Eastern and Middle districts of Pennsylvania, the Western District of Virginia, the Northern and Southern districts of West Virginia and the District of Delaware. In that role, he has handled a wide range of prosecutorial duties, including grand jury practice, trials and appeals.
Harrell has lectured at numerous EPA, DOJ, American Bar Association, and private practice seminars and conferences. He also taught Eastern European, South African, and Caribbean/Central American prosecutors, police, and environmental regulators about environmental crime between 2000 and 2009. He created and taught a course, Environmental Enforcement, as an adjunct professor at Villanova Law School for 10 years. He is a former newspaper reporter and US Army veteran.
