OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi School of Law is welcoming several new faces this year among its faculty and senior staff.
“We are excited about the legal knowledge and skills, scholarly productivity, and teaching experience they will bring to our faculty,” said Frederick G. Slabach, Dean of UM Law.
Brian Downing is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law. Downing teaches Civil Procedure, Intellectual Property courses, and courses related to developing technologies. His research involves the disruption of legal systems and internet platforms by novel technologies and contemplates how those technologies and platforms should be regulated.
Before joining the faculty at Ole Miss Law, Downing spent 16 years in legal and engineering roles at Google. As one of the early product counsel for the company, he developed products and legal approaches that influenced modern internet law. He counseled and managed legal teams across most of Google’s platforms, including advertising, mapping, social networks, broadband, and self-driving cars. Later he led the Google Search legal team for five years and ran departmental training initiatives. The latter role inspired a love of teaching that brought Downing to academia. He also spent many years in Google’s engineering group. There he created privacy and security engineering teams and led the compliance group for Android, Chrome, and Photos, marrying his legal and engineering leadership to shape digital regulation, particularly in the European Union.
Prior to Google, Downing was an Associate at Proskauer Rose LLP in Los Angeles, representing musicians in copyright disputes. Downing received a B.A. in Government from Claremont McKenna College and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
Ann E. Tweedy is joining the faculty as a Professor of Law. Prior to her arrival at Ole Miss Law, Tweedy was a law professor at University of South Dakota School of Law since January 2020. She previously served as an in-house attorney for Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and for Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and in an Of Counsel role at Kanji & Katzen, PLLC.
Her work in practice focused primarily on natural resources law and environmental law in the context of protection of Tribal treaty resources. She played an integral role in treaty rights cases that were heard by the Ninth Circuit, the District of Columbia Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court, including the subproceeding of United States v. Washington known as the Culverts Case.
Tweedy has taught at Michigan State University College of Law, California Western School of Law, and Hamline University School of Law (now Mitchell Hamline), where she served as an Associate Professor. Most recently, she served as an adjunct professor in University of Tulsa College of Law’s online Masters of Jurisprudence Program in Indian Law. She is a noted scholar on tribal jurisdiction and tribal civil rights law, as well as on bisexuality and the law. Her scholarship has been cited in Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law and other treatises and excerpted in textbooks, including Justin B. Richland and Sarah Deer’s Introduction to Tribal Legal Studies and William B. Rubenstein et al.’s Cases and Materials on Sexual Orientation and the Law. She has been invited to present at many conferences in the United States and abroad and, in 2016, presented the Annual Rubash Distinguished Lecture in Law and Social Work at University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
After graduating from University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where she was inducted into the Order of the Coif, Tweedy clerked for the Honorable Ronald M. Gould of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for the Honorable Rex Armstrong of the Oregon Court of Appeals. She previously served as Chair of the Federal Bar Association’s Indian Law Section, and as a past Chair of the Washington State Bar Association’s Indian Law Section, and she formerly served as a volunteer Hearing Officer for the Disciplinary Board of the Washington State Bar Association. She was recently appointed to the Suquamish Court of Appeals.
Tweedy is also an award-winning poet. She is the author of one full-length poetry book and three chapbooks.
Jamila Virgil is joining the UM Law faculty as an Assistant Professor of Practice for Legal Writing.
Marissa Watson is joining Ole Miss Law as a Public Service Law Librarian and Assistant Professor of the Practice of Law, with a primary focus on teaching legal writing and research. Before joining the faculty, Watson worked for the University of Mississippi’s Equal Opportunity & Regulatory Compliance office from 2022 through the summer of 2025. Prior to this position, Watson worked for a law practice in Oxford, Mississippi focusing in insurance defense.
Watson earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi in 2018, and her juris doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in December 2020.
Melissa Strickland is joining the UM Law faculty as Public Service Law Librarian and Associate Professor of the Practice of Law.
Patrick Bryan is joining UM Law as the director of the Child Advocacy Clinic and Assistant Professor of Practice. Prior to arriving at Ole Miss Law, Bryan was a shareholder at King Law Offices in North Carolina, where his primary practice was family law. Additionally, he practiced collaborative law – a process through which separating spouses can avoid the often inherent pains and public displays of traditional litigation. He also served as the Chair of the firm’s Family Law Practice Area Group.
Bryan, in his professional career, has also served as the Director of Development for the Children & Family Resource Center of Henderson County – where he acted as an advocate for children and young families in our community.
Bryan is originally from The Shoals in Alabama, but has called Asheville home since 2012. He earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Troy University and his J.D. from Ole Miss Law.
Aaron Brynildson joins Ole Miss Law this fall as an Air and Space Law Instructor. Prior to this role, he served for 10 years as a Judge Advocate (JAG) for the U.S. Air Force, where he served as Chief of Space and Operations Law at the Space Force’s Space Operations Command.
Brynildson also served as Legal Advisor to the National Space Defense Center, the premier command and control unit for U.S. Space Command. He holds an LL.M. in Air and Space Law from the University of Mississippi (summa cum laude), a J.D. from the University of California, Irvine School of Law, a B.A. in Political Science from UC Irvine, and is an active member of the California Bar.
Amber Caldeira joins UM Law as the Senior Assistant Dean for Enrollment Management. Prior to arriving at Ole Miss, she served as Toldeo Law’s dean for admissions. In her role, Caldeira oversaw the recruitment and admission of incoming law students, including programming to help prepare students for the LSAT, as well as all aspects of enrollment management, including marketing and communications, in addition to managing pathways with seven universities that offer an accelerated route to Toledo Law. Caldeira is a 2012 graduate of Toledo Law.
Caldeira and her father have an estate planning and probate practice, Bohl & Caldeira, LLC, and she is licensed to practice in both Michigan and Ohio. One of her favorite things about practicing law and working in higher education is her deep connection to people and building relationships with others.
Caldeira earned her B.A. magna cum laude from Lourdes University in Psychology and Criminal Justice, her J.D. from the University of Toledo College of Law, and will complete her M.A. in Educational Psychology in December 2025 from UToledo.