Russell Coleman, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Government Affairs at Dean Foods Co.

Dallas-based Dean Foods Co. is a Fortune 500 food and beverage company and the largest processor and direct-to-store distributor of fresh fluid milk and other dairy case products in the United States. The company has 15,000 employees, operates about 60 processing facilities throughout the country and has about 5,000 delivery trucks on America's roads daily.

Among the company's many grocery, food service, institutional and other customers, the company serves 32,500 schools, and last year schoolchildren enjoyed about 1.8 billion half-pints of Dean Foods milk. The company has about 50 regional and national brands and annual revenues of about $8 billion.

Russell Coleman serves as Dean Foods' executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary and oversees government affairs for the company.

Legal Team

The Dean Foods legal department consists of nine attorneys and several paralegals.

“Most of the attorneys handle several legal subject matter areas, and collaboration across subject matter areas is high,” Coleman said, adding that the team also works closely with a D.C.-based in-house government relations professional.

“The team's experience allows most legal work to be performed in-house,” he said.

Outside Counsel

The Dean Foods legal department works with: Hogan Lovells for certain food regulatory matters; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher for financings and related corporate matters; and Littler Mendelson on certain employment matters.

Daily Duties

Coleman's daily duties include meeting with members of the senior executive team on various business projects and legal issues, as well as department attorneys and paralegals on customer contracts, food regulation, real estate, litigation, SEC reporting, research and development, employment and environmental matters. His responsibilities also include government relations and industry trade association matters.

Route Taken

Coleman graduated from Rice University and the University of Texas with engineering and law degrees, respectively. He later completed executive courses at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a business, corporate, finance and securities attorney at what is now Locke Lord for many years before joining in 2003 longtime firm client Belo Corp., a newspaper and broadcast television company, as general counsel. After Belo Corp. was sold to Gannett Co. Inc. in 2013, he returned to private practice, joining the Meadows, Collier, Reed, Cousins, Crouch & Ungerman law firm. Coleman joined Dean Foods in 2016.

Personal

An El Paso native, Coleman has been married for 33 years to Marty Coleman, a construction attorney at FisherBroyles and an AAA construction disputes arbitrator. They have three adult children, ages 28, 25 and 21.

His personal interests include backpacking, travel, history and government/public policy matters, especially redistricting reform.

Last Book

“Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong on GMOs,” by Mark Lynas.