UK General Counsel Bill Thro named inaugural chair of APLU’s Council on Legal Affairs
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 24, 2025) — The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) has announced the launch of its new Council on Legal Affairs (CLA), naming University of Kentucky General Counsel William E. Thro as the inaugural chair.
The council, introduced at APLU’s annual meeting last week in Philadelphia, brings together the senior-most legal affairs officers from member institutions to advise the association on emerging legal and policy issues and provide professional development and peer learning for chief legal officers across the country.
Thro, who has served as UK’s chief legal officer since 2012, is widely regarded as a national leader in higher education law. A former solicitor general for Virginia, he has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, litigated significant constitutional issues in appellate courts nationwide and authored influential scholarship, including “The Constitution on Campus” in 2022 and “Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education” in 2018. His work has been cited by the highest courts in 14 states, and he has held leadership roles with the Education Law Association and the National Education Finance Academy.
A Kentucky native, Thro earned degrees from Hanover College, the University of Melbourne and the University of Virginia School of Law. Before joining UK, he served as general counsel at Christopher Newport University and held assistant attorney general roles in both Colorado and Virginia. He continues to teach courses on the Constitution in UK’s College of Arts and Sciences and J. David Rosenberg College of Law.
The establishment of the CLA formalizes the work of APLU’s earlier General Counsels Advisory Group, which provided key guidance to the association in recent years. The new council will be supported by APLU’s Office of Governmental Affairs and will hold its first summer meeting July 21-22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Allison Newhart, general counsel at North Carolina State University, will serve as chair-elect.
With Thro’s leadership, APLU’s new Council on Legal Affairs is positioned to strengthen collaboration among institutional legal officers and help universities navigate the evolving landscape of higher education law. For more information about the Council on Legal Affairs, visit APLU’s website: www.aplu.org.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.