Mayor Freddie O’Connell announced Thursday the appointment of Tyler Chance Yarbro to serve as the next director of the Metro Department of Law. Yarbro, the managing partner of Nashville law firm Dodson Parker Behm & Capparella, will replace Wally Dietz, who will retire from the position in July. The Metro Council will need to approve Yarbro's appointment.
Candi Henry has been named to replace Yarbro at Dodson Parker Behm & Capparella.
Yarbro served as Metro’s public defender from 2004 to 2010, moving from that role to Dodson Parker Behm & Capparella in 2011. The wife of state Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville), she has served as an adjunct Vanderbilt University law professor since 2015.
Tyler Chance Yarbro
Yarbro graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Wellesley College, where she studied English and economics. She earned her law degree at the University of Virginia, where she was recognized for her legal writing and was named a Dillard Fellow to assist and tutor in the first-year legal research and writing program.
She served for nine years on the Community Corrections Advisory Board and for three years on the founding board of the Human Trafficking Survivors Court Foundation. Yarbro volunteers in various leadership roles at Christ Church Cathedral, where she currently serves on the vestry and recently completed a two-year term as senior warden. In 2017, Tyler was nominated by then-Mayor Megan Barry and appointed by the Metro Council to the Greenways and Open Spaces Commission. By virtue of this position on the commission, Yarbro also serves on the board of directors for Greenways for Nashville.
Dietz has served as Metro’s law director since 2021. Prior to that, he spent nearly 40 years at Nashville law firm Bass, Berry & Sims, where he chaired the firm’s compliance and government investigations practice group.
Early in his career, Dietz served as a legislative and media aide to then-U.S. Sen. Jim Sasser and as a judicial clerk for U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Wiseman Jr. He received the Nashville Bar Association’s Liberty Bell Award in 2002 for his pro bono work in international human rights.
“Wally Dietz has been a staunch defender of Nashville’s right to self-govern, expertly navigating unprecedented legal battles against both state and federal unconstitutional overreach,” O’Connell says in a release. “Beyond the courtroom, Wally has been a critical counselor to me and many others in Metro government, providing steady, indispensable counsel on a wide range of issues that shape the city’s future.
“Tyler Yarbro is an exceptional choice to follow Wally as the director of law,” the mayor adds. “She has the management experience, legal talent and tireless commitment to justice that will make her both a formidable defender our Nashville’s rights and a trusted counselor to Metro.”
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
