MWAA board Chair Earl Adams Jr. joins Transportation Department

Adams is the second person from the regional airports authority board to be appointed to a Biden administration post

Earl Adams Jr. has stepped down as chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority board to join the Biden administration as chief counsel at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Adams, 45, represented Maryland on the regional airports authority, which oversees operations at Reagan National and Washington Dulles International airports. He was appointed to the board in 2012 and has served as its chairman since January 2020. Before joining the Biden administration, he was office managing partner at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP.

He is the second MWAA board member to be appointed to a job in the Biden administration’s Transportation Department. A. Bradley Mims, who also represented Maryland, was appointed deputy administrator at the Federal Aviation Administration.

William Sudow, the board’s vice chairman, will take over as chairman through the end of the year, MWAA officials announced at their monthly board meeting Wednesday. A new vice chair will be elected at the board’s next monthly meeting in September. The board traditionally does not meet in August.

Also at the meeting, Jerome Davis, 65, executive vice president and chief revenue officer at MWAA, announced he would retire after seven years with the authority. Davis is largely credited with remaking the authority to be more customer-friendly and for boosting the share of income it earns from nonaviation sources, such as parking, retail and restaurants.