Mayor Bill Haslam announced today that Ronald E. Mills has been promoted to deputy law director for the City of Knoxville.

Mills has been a senior city attorney and the primary legal advisor to the Knoxville Police Department since 1997.

He succeeds Debra C. Poplin, who was selected to be the City's new law director last month.

"Ron Mills has been a great asset to this city and its residents for more than a decade," Poplin said. "He possesses a wealth of knowledge about municipal law and I, like everyone else in city government, look forward to working with him in his new role."

Mills, 44, grew up in Madisonville and attended Hiwassee College, a two-year liberal arts college affiliated with the Methodist Church, in his hometown graduating in 1983.

He earned his bachelor's degree from King College in Bristol in 1985 before attending the Vanderbilt University School of Law where he graduated in 1988.

Mills subsequently practiced law for several years in Nashville before returning to East Tennessee and he has experience in civil rights and personal injury cases, worker's compensation, contracts, bankruptcy, property law and intellectual property rights law.

In addition to his work as an attorney Mills has been active in the community particularly in regard to Hiwassee College where he is a former chairman of the school's board of trustees and a past president of the Hiwassee College Alumni Association Board of Governors.

He is an associate member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and he works closely with other police legal advisors across the state through the Tennessee Association of Police Chiefs.

Mills and his wife, Stephanie, have two daughters, Sarah Beth and Rachel, and the family attends Dotson Memorial Baptist Church. In his spare time Mills enjoys baseball - he's an Atlanta Braves fan - and golf.