Brenda D. Pryor

Brenda D. Pryor joins Udall Shumway PLC as an experienced attorney and conflict management professional. She brings a diverse background spanning federal mediation, higher education, and labor relations to her practice, enabling her to offer strategic counsel and a comprehensive perspective to school districts, administrative personnel, and municipal entities.

Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Pryor served as a federal mediator, where she specialized in employment discrimination, labor mediation, public policy negotiations, and workplace conflict resolution management. Her deep understanding of systemic conflict and dispute resolution is further backed by a decade spent with a higher education teachers union. In that role, she routinely advised leadership and members on complex state and federal rights, managed grievances, and successfully negotiated more than 30 labor contracts.

Preceding her federal service, Ms. Pryor served as in-house counsel for a state university in Illinois. In this capacity, she managed an extensive institutional portfolio that included labor and employment law, immigration law, and regulatory compliance. Notably, she also spearheaded research misconduct investigations and served as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Officer for the medical school. At Udall Shumway, Ms. Pryor channels this deep institutional knowledge into defensive advocacy and preventative counsel for the firm’s clients.

Practice Areas

• Education Law
• Employment & Traditional Labor
• Title IX
• Public Records & Open Meeting Law

Education

• J.D., James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona
• B.S., University of Minnesota

Jurisdictions Admitted to Practice

• Illinois (2001)
• Arizona (2026)

Professional & Bar Association Memberships

• State Bar of Arizona
• State Bar of Illinois
• American Bar Association – Section on Labor and Employment Law
• Arizona Black Bar Association
• National Association of Parliamentarians