Gov.-Elect Eric Barlow has asked an award-winning attorney who spent decades representing the minerals industry to serve as Wyoming Attorney General.
Barlow’s team announced Walter Eggers’ nomination Tuesday, along with two internal appointments: Erin Taylor as chief of staff and Eydie Trautwein as chief operating officer.
Eggers will have to clear state Senate nomination early next year to become AG.
“I am, first and foremost, very grateful and honored by the governor-elect’s decision to appoint me to this position, subject to confirmation by the Senate,” he told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday phone interview. “I am very interested in this job because I believe it will put me in a position to advocate for the state of Wyoming.”
Eggers said he plans to be both a policy wonk and hands-on advisor.
“I think I will rely on and lean on my experience as a lawyer, in my 24 years working with Holland & Hart, as both a practicing lawyer, litigator, and also manager of other lawyers,” said Eggers.
Wyoming’s current attorney general, Keith Kautz, is retiring at the end of Gov. Mark Gordon’s term.
An attorney for 29 years, Eggers earned his juris doctorate from the University of Wyoming College of law in 1997.
Over the next three years he worked both sides of the criminal law aisle, in prosecution then public defense. Then he went to work for Cheyenne-based Holland & Hart, where he became a partner.
Eggers led the Cheyenne office for five years. He also led the firm’s practice group for energy, environment and natural resources from 2017-2021. At one point, he said, he managed about 100 lawyers and legal professionals across the firm, all working on issues relating to natural resources and development.
His experience with the energy sector stretched across his time at the firm, he said.
“My day-to-day for 24 years at Holland & Hart was primarily administrative law – regulatory, state, and local tax; those types of issues,” he said. “And I primarily represented oil and gas, coal, and other mineral and energy companies doing business in the state of Wyoming. That was my personal practice.”
Eggers also served as a member of the Board of Commissioners of Equal Justice Wyoming. He helped create the Equal Justice Wyoming Foundation in 2013, a nonprofit group geared toward fundraising to support civil legal aid.
Eggers launched three successful campaigns to Washington, D.C., to ensure continued federal funding for civil legal aid.
He received the Wyoming Pro Bono Service award in 2010, Wyoming State Bar’s Champion of Justice award in 2019, then the bar’s John M. Burman Extraordinary Service Award in 2024, after serving on the state’s Access to Justice Commission and helping middle- to low-income people gain representation in civil lawsuits.
The Wyoming Attorney General wages and defends civil litigation for the state and state officials. The AG also defends criminal appeals before the Wyoming Supreme Court and federal court, and advises the governor and other top state officials.
The appointed figure has taken center stage in Wyoming news for years, as the AG has been tasked with defending the Legislature’s multiple laws attempting to ban abortion.
The Wyoming Supreme Court struck down the state’s abortion bans as unconstitutional on Jan. 6, but the Legislature passed a newer ban in March.
A new legal challenge followed, and the latest case in that sequence is ongoing.
The AG won a high-profile appeal for the State Board of Land Commissioners last week, after the neighbor of an incoming wind farm asserted that the board violated its own rules by approving a lease with the wind-energy developer.
Congress is shifting to Democratic control in January – a status often at odds with Wyoming’s traditional energy interests. Eggers acknowledged that the federal shift could have an “influence” on Wyoming but said he doesn’t expect it to be immediate.
“It’s obviously something we will watch very closely on behalf of the state of Wyoming, to make sure Wyoming’s interests are protected,” he said.
Eggers is facing another potentially significant challenge, as seven states, including Wyoming, eye the terms of the Colorado River Compact, and work to negotiate water rations amid years of drought.
Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Eggers said his family moved to Laramie when he was 6 months old. His father taught English for the University of Wyoming.
Eggers is married and has two grown children, ages 22 and 24.
Taylor runs a consulting business and served most recently as executive director of the Wyoming Association of Community College Trustee; and as the Wyoming Business Alliance’s vice-chair.
Gov. Matt Mead appointed her to the Wyoming Arts Council and the Wyoming Lottery Corporation during his tenure.
Trautwein graduated from UW law in 2004, then worked within the Wyoming Supreme Court. She most recently served Wyoming State Auditor’s Office as deputy state auditor, under Auditor Kristi Racines.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
