Richard Bryan


Richard Hudson Bryan is an American attorney and politician who served as a United States Senator from Nevada from 1989 to 2001. A Democrat, Bryan served as the 25th Governor of Nevada from 1983 to 1989, and before that served as the state's attorney general and a member of the State Senate.

Early life

Bryan was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from the University of Nevada at Reno in 1959 where he was a member of Alpha Tau Omega and the president of ASUN. He earned his law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. In 1963 he was admitted to the Nevada Bar. He was Clark County's first public defender.

Political career

Bryan served as a member of the Nevada Senate from 1972 to 1978. In 1979, Bryan became the Nevada Attorney General, and served in the position until 1983.
Bryan served as the Governor of Nevada from 1983 to 1989.
After ending his tenure as Governor, Bryan successfully ran for the U.S. Senate, serving from 1989 to 2001. During his tenure in the Senate, Bryan served on the Finance, Banking, Intelligence and Commerce Committees. He opted not to run for re-election in 2000.
Bryan was an opponent of SETI and introduced an amendment to the 1994 budget that secured the cancellation of the High Resolution Microwave Survey and terminated NASA's SETI efforts. NASA criticized Bryan for his opposition to the SETI program, which uses electromagnetic radiation to search for extraterrestrial life.
Bryan also focused on preventing Yucca Mountain from being used as a nuclear waste long-term storage site. Though the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository would be built during Bryan's time in the Senate, his opposition, along with delayed any actual storage from occurring. This opposition would continue long after Bryan had retired before plans for storage were discontinued by President Barack Obama.