Barry, a partner of the Washington, D.C., office of Kutak Rock LLP, is a retired Army colonel with over 26 years of active duty, military legal experience in The Judge Advocate General's Corps, and over 28 years of experience in the private sector. At the time of his military retirement in 1989, he was the Army's first Chief of The Environmental Law Division, an organization which he conceived and established while still at his post as Chief of the Army's Litigation Division at The Pentagon. As the senior uniformed environmental lawyer in the Army, his responsibilities included defense of environmental challenges to Army activities brought in United States district courts. These included cases brought under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, also known as Superfund) and other environmental and administrative procedure statutes. He provided legal advice to senior Army decision makers on such matters as endangered species, chemical and biological materials and environmental criminal liability.

Barry has served as outside counsel to the federal Surface Transportation Board's Section on Environmental Analysis with respect to the NEPA assessments prepared to evaluate the environmental impacts of the mergers and acquisitions of various national railroads, including Union Pacific, Canadian National, Conrail, Norfolk Southern and CSX. Barry presently represents six state and local government municipal entities concerning perfluorinated compound contamination of municipal water supplies and disposal of contaminated sludge. These matters arise from military aviation use of aqueous fire-fighting foam at current and former military bases. Several of these cases have resulted in military funding for on-going treatment of aquifers, publicly owned treatment works, and provision of alternate water supplies.