[4] He served in the administration of President Barack Obama as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2012 to 2016.

[5][6] Washburn has also been a federal prosecutor, a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, and the General Counsel of the National Indian Gaming Commission.

[7] Washburn discussed his childhood and mother in a speech given upon receiving the Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association.

She eventually retired as a community health representative for the Chickasaw Nation and currently serves on the tribe's Council of Elders.

After graduating with honors in 1989,[1] Washburn began law school at Washington University in St. Louis where he was the inaugural Gustavus A. Buder Scholar.

During his tenure there, Washburn successfully argued Montana v. EPA, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision of the Environmental Protection Agency to recognize the Salish and Kootenai Tribes as a state for purposes of setting water quality standards under the Clean Water Act.

[10] He also helped the Las Vegas Paiute Native American Tribe obtain water rights for a major development on the Snow Mountain Reservation, located northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, and litigated water rights cases on behalf of the United States in Arizona and Montana.

[3] Working in the Violent Crimes Section, he handled homicides, sexual assault, bank robberies, and various other offenses, many of them arising in Native American country.

[12] Third, Washburn helped the NIGC establish, over the strong objections of the Department of Justice, the right of tribal nations to conduct Class II gaming with technological aids that helped maintain a strong revenue source for tribes and gave them more leverage in negotiations with states over revenue sharing.

Washburn began his academic career as a professor in 2002 at the University of Minnesota Law School, where he earned tenure in 2006.

[14] In July 2008, Senator Byron Dorgan introduced S. 3320: Tribal Law and Order Act of 2008 in an attempt to fix some of the problems identified in Washburn's scholarship.

These recruits included George Bach, Cannon, Max Minzner, Aliza Organick, Dawinder "Dave" Sidhu, Kevin Tu and Alex Ritchie.

During Washburn's tenure, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan[19] and Sonia Sotomayor[20] visited the School of Law, and Ninth Circuit Judge Mary Murguia gave the inaugural Senator Dennis Chavez Memorial Lecture.

Washburn also obtained a grant from then-Governor Bill Richardson to fund a DWI-DV Prosecution-in-Practice class in which students prosecute cases of domestic violence and driving while intoxicated.

Washburn left the UNM deanship in the fall of 2012, when President Barack Obama appointed him to serve as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

[1][24] He was the twelfth Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs to be confirmed since the position was established by Congress in the late 1970s.

Washburn also oversaw the establishment of the White House Council of Native American Affairs by President Obama.

Washburn's leadership at the Department of the Interior was marked by significant policy accomplishments, such as initiatives designed to preempt state taxation of business activity in Native American country to enhance tribal economic development,[26] a reversal of the department's rule against taking land in trust for Alaska tribes,[27] more than half a million acres of new lands taken into trust for tribes,[28] and more than 1.5 million acres of fractionated interests in existing trust lands restored to tribes.

Early in Washburn's tenure, Congress imposed a sequestration on the federal government, cutting five percent from each agency's budget.

[35] Washburn criticized House members for placing the legitimacy of some tribes in doubt[36] and opposing the Obama administration's land-into-trust initiatives.

[39] Washburn attributed the successes on initiatives for Native American tribes during President Obama's second term to having an extraordinarily strong and hard-working political team in place in the Office of the Assistant Secretary, pursuing President Obama's Native American Country agenda, including the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Larry Roberts, Deputy Assistant Secretary Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes, Chiefs of Staff Sarah Walters and Sarah Harris, Rodina Cave, Cheryl Andrews Maltais, Kallie Hanley, Don Yu, Jonodev Chaudhuri, Kathryn Isom Clause and Sequoyah Simermeyer.