Tom Christina is the Executive Director of the ERIC Legal Center. He guides and coordinates the Center’s participation in cases that could have significant effects on the interests of ERIC member companies in their capacities as sponsors of employee benefit plans.
Tom has extensive legal experience representing and working with ERISA self-funded plans, including retirement and health and welfare plans. He began practicing in employee benefits law in 1989 at Covington and Burling, where he conducted extensive work on key issues for ERIC member companies and worked in some instances on ERIC’s behalf. Prior to that he spent two years in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy where he served as an Associate Deputy Attorney General.
Tom joined ERIC after 18 years with Ogletree Deakins, where he was a partner until 2021 and of-counsel through 2023. He had founded the employee benefits practice of Greenville, SC-based labor and employment firm Haynsworth Baldwin in 1995, which merged with Ogletree in 2005.
During his near 30-year tenure in private practice Tom was involved in a broad range of benefit plan issues, including leading a high-profile litigation from inception through consideration at the Supreme Court.
Tom received a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences, where he pursued a self-designed course of study in Ancient History and Political Philosophy. He received a law degree from the Harvard Law School in 1980, and is admitted to practice in Massachusetts, New York, the District of Columbia, and South Carolina, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court and a number of lower federal courts.