The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Board of Directors has selected Gene Gamez as the agency’s new General Counsel.

The Dallas Area Rapid Transit board of directors has tapped a longtime litigator and current senior assistant general counsel at the agency as its new chief legal counsel.

In addition to overseeing the DART legal department as general counsel, Gene Gamez also will provide legal advice and assistance to the DART board of directors, as well as its president/executive director, internal auditor and director of board support, according to a statement announcing Gamez’s promotion. He succeeds Scott Carlson, who left DART after six years last September and now is GC at Dallas-based medical device company Eclipse MedCorp, according to Carlson’s LinkedIn profile.

Prior to joining DART more than 19 years ago, during which time Gamez handled and managed assigned litigation cases in state and federal court and acted as legal adviser to the DART police department, according to his LinkedIn profile, he was an assistant district attorney in the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office for three years. There, he served as lead prosecutor in about 30 criminal misdemeanor jury trials and 15 felony jury trials and oversaw a misdemeanor court and supervised two assistant DAs assigned to the court, LinkedIn said.

In his new role, Gamez, who could not be reached for comment, will lead a department that, as of July 2017, included 10 attorneys and eight support staff members, including paralegals. The in-house work his team handles includes real estate, transactions, litigation, procurement, administrative appeals, labor and employment, employee grievances, state public information act matters and ethics.

More than 700 square miles make up the service area of DART, which operates the largest light rail network in North America.

Gamez earned his degree at Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston.