• Served for more than three decades in Congress as the representative for the 21st Congressional District of Texas.
• Served as Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which has jurisdiction over NASA, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
• Also served on the Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. He is a former Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Ethics Committee, which makes him the only recent member of Congress to have chaired three committees.

Former U.S. Congressman Lamar Smith advises clients on a range of public policy and government relations issues. Lamar served for 32 years in Congress (1987-2018) as the representative for the 21st Congressional District of Texas.

During his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, Lamar served as Chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which has jurisdiction over NASA, the Department of Energy (including its 17 national laboratories), the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He oversaw agency budgets of about $40 billion, where the primary focus was on research and development.

Lamar also served on the Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. He is a former Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Ethics Committee, which makes him the only recent member of Congress to have chaired three committees.

Lamar was ranked the most effective member of the House in the 112th Congress (2011-2012) in a study that was jointly conducted by the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. According to the same study, he was ranked in the top 10 percent in effectiveness in the last eight Republican Congresses.

He was named Policymaker of the Year by Politico and Politico Pro for his work on patent reform legislation. According to Politico, “the lawmakers’ America Invents Act became the only major piece of tech legislation signed into law in 2011—a rare instance in which a bipartisan effort bore fruit.”