Zachary Bray, J.D.
Co-Director, Ashland-Spears Distinguished Research Professor of Law
Zachary Bray is an Ashland-Spears Distinguished Research Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. A Kentucky native, Professor Bray began his academic career at the University of Houston Law Center in 2010, where he was awarded tenure before he returned home in 2016. Professor Bray's research on monument law and monument conflicts, private land trusts, religious land use, low-income housing, the Endangered Species Act, and the evolution of groundwater law has been published widely, including the William & Mary Law Review, the Brigham Young University Law Review, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review. Professor Bray is also the co-founder and co-director of The Monuments Workshop at UK.
Professor Bray has taught a wide range of courses, including Property and Statutory Interpretation & Regulation to first-year law students. He also has taught upper-level law school courses in Administrative Law, Land Use, Natural Resources, Payment Systems, Real Estate Transactions, Trusts & Estates, Water Law, and seminars or writing classes on Contemporary Real Estate Issues, Land Use & Local Government Controls, and Property Theory.
Professor Bray's commitment to his students' success was recognized by the University of Houston in 2015 with the university-wide Provost's Teaching Excellence Award, given after assessment by students, former students, colleagues, and master teachers from a variety of different disciplines. Professor Bray's teaching work at the University of Kentucky was similarly recognized in 2022 with the Alumni Association's Great Teacher Award, another university-wide recognition for teaching excellence given after an application prepared by his students, former students, and colleagues. In 2024 his teaching was recognized by the Rosenberg College of Law with the Duncan Teaching Award.
In addition to his teaching work at Kentucky and Houston's law schools, Professor Bray has taught at the Washington University School of Law, the William & Mary Law School, the Gaines Center for the Humanities at the University of Kentucky, the University of Houston's Pre-Law Pipeline Program, the Kentucky Legal Education Opportunity ("KLEO") Summer Institute, and continuing legal education ("CLE") presentations for practicing lawyers.
Professor Bray earned a J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was an Essays Editor on the Yale Law Journal. He completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy and History at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to entering academia, Professor Bray worked in Kentucky for the Honorable Jennifer B. Coffman, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky and Judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, in Houston for the Honorable Carolyn Dineen King, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and in Los Angeles for Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. He is an active member of the Kentucky bar and has been admitted to practice in California (inactive) as well as multiple federal courts.