Meet Ryan
Delegate Ryan Spiegel represents District 17 (Gaithersburg and Rockville) in the Maryland House of Delegates. There, he serves on the influential Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee on Transportation and the Environment. He is also the Chair of the Montgomery County House Delegation's Committee on Land Use, Transportation, and Public Safety. He has sponsored legislation on several important topics ranging from bills expanding financial opportunity for underserved communities to proposals to strengthen resources for transportation. Delegate Spiegel has also helped bring hundreds of thousands of dollars back to Rockville and Gaithersburg for investments in municipal projects, community amenities, and nonprofit services.
From 2007 to 2023, Ryan was elected four times to serve on the Gaithersburg City Council and served as Council Vice President in 2012, 2015, and 2018. Ryan’s signature initiative, Bank on Gaithersburg (now the Financial Empowerment Center), was established to promote financial stability for families while also boosting the local economy and reducing the strain on government. Greatly expanded to include tax prep assistance, credit counseling, and other services, the program celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2019. On the City Council, Ryan also championed smart economic growth, affordable housing, transportation infrastructure, police reform, and public safety.
In 2019, Ryan served as the President of the Maryland Municipal League where he shepherded the organization through the COVID pandemic, pivoting to virtual conferences, convening officials to coordinate crisis management, and appointing the most diverse team of committee leaders in the League’s history to continue the strong advocacy for Maryland’s municipalities. In 2018, Ryan served as Chair of the League’s Legislative Committee during one of the most successful legislative advocacy years in the League’s history, in which cities and towns successfully defended local control while restoring critical funding for transportation.
Since 2021, Ryan has been a partner at the law firm of Thompson Hine, where he specializes in government contracting and civil litigation matters. He has earned several recognitions including being named a national Rising Star by Law 360 and a SuperLawyers Rising Star in Maryland and D.C. He has also spent hundreds of hours doing pro bono work on a variety of cases ranging from death penalty appeals, to protecting tenants from wrongful eviction, to seeking asylum for those who are persecuted for their political beliefs, to obtaining Holocaust reparations. Ryan has also served on the Board of Directors of the University of Maryland Hillel, YouthAchieve, Inc., and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
Ryan was born and raised in Baltimore, where he attended Beth Tfiloh Day School and Pikesville High School. His mother was a longtime Maryland public high school teacher and later a professor at Stevenson University. His father, whose family has deep roots in Baltimore, was a community dentist--a healthcare provider and small business owner. Both still live in Baltimore County. Ryan was an award-winning student leader and recipient of the Banneker-Key scholarship at the University of Maryland, where he graduated magna cum laude from the Honors Program with a degree in Journalism. He was a columnist for the Diamondback student newspaper, president of the Omicron Delta Kappa Honor Society, a winner of the Model Citizenship Prize (formerly the H.C. Byrd Award), and Greek Leader of the Year. The University nominated him for the Rhodes Scholarship. He went on to graduate from Stanford Law School, where he was one of two editors-in-chief of the Stanford Law & Policy Review and a recipient of the Lawrason Driscoll Moot Court Award.
Ryan lives in Gaithersburg with his wife Rachael, a professional photographer, their children Jack and Dalia, and their dog Charlie.