Commissioner Andrea Pope Roche Joins Agency

Columbia attorney Andrea Pope Roche began her six-year term with the Commission on June 30 and is already hard at work.

“I’ll probably sit in on some cases at the start but, beginning with the second week in July, I expect to have a full load of cases,” she says.  Commissioner Roche, 40, brings with her unusual expertise and an outstanding academic record.

She has experience both in practicing law and in workers’ compensation.  She was a partner at Barnes, Alford, Stork & Johnson before Gov. Mark Sanford appointed her to the Commission earlier this year.  “I’m sure it will be a different perspective. I’m used to defending cases vigorously and I am looking forward to a more quasi-judicial role,” she says.

Commissioner Roche is a graduate of Yale Law School, where among several honors and activities she was Symposium Editor, Yale Journal on Regulation.  She did her undergraduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in English and was named to the Dean’s List.  Earlier in her career she was associate editor at Culler Publishing Company in Camden and edited articles for Sporting Classics and N.C. Homes and Gardens magazines.  Since 2003, Commissioner Pope has been a Legal Writing Instructor at the University of South Carolina law school.

Her legal experience includes stints as staff attorney for the South Carolina Court of Appeals, and clerkships with the Honorable Carol Connor, South Carolina Court of Appeals, and Honorable Robert F. Chapman, US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Columbia.

Commissioner Roche is an avid football and basketball fan and a proficient golfer, with a handicap of 9.