Behn Miller Kelly
Dispute Resolution Officer

Ms. Kelly is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the George Mason University School of Law, and brings over 16 years of federal procurement and dispute resolution experience to the ODRA. Ms. Kelly began her career as a bid protest hearing officer for the GAO, where she issued a large body of bid protest decisions involving cutting edge legal issues and technically complex procurements, many of which required extensive discovery and hearings. Several of these bid protest decisions have been treated as persuasive authority by the ODRA. (See Protests of Camber Corporation and Information Systems & Networks Corporation (Consolidated), 98-ODRA-00079 and 98-ODRA-00080, citing KPMG Peat Marwick, LLP, B-259479.2, May 9, 1995 , 95-2 CPD P 13). Ms. Kelly was the first hearing officer at GAO to employ alternative dispute resolution techniques in bid protest resolution, and she authored the first edition of GAO’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Guidance.

While at GAO, Ms. Kelly was also detailed to the staff of the United States Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, where she worked on procurement matters, including the public-private competition policies set forth in Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76. Much of Ms. Kelly’s detail involved the Committee’s work on the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act, for which she is acknowledged in the accompanying Committee Report.

In addition to her bid protest and procurement work, Ms. Kelly has also served as counsel on a broad range of Congressionally requested investigations and compliance reviews conducted by the GAO—and she often used ADR techniques to elicit statements or to secure records. Examples of her most recent GAO work include a report which identified an agency head’s bad faith actions against a contractor, as well as a report which found that one agency’s Inspector General had impeded investigations or interfered with certain settlement actions under the False Claims Act.

Throughout her career, Ms. Kelly has lectured frequently on procurement topics. Some of her audiences have included the U.S. Judge Advocate General (JAG) School in Charlottesville , Virginia , and various contracting officer seminars sponsored by the Defense Acquisition University. Ms. Kelly also belongs to the American Bar Association and is a member of both its ADR and Bid Protest Committees. Her E-mail address is: Behn.Kelly@faa.gov.