In 1935, he left government service to become the special counsel to Kenneth R. Kingsbury, the president of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron Corporation) in San Francisco. In 1937, he became a partner at Pillsbury Madison Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), which was the company's outside counsel. In 1941, he was called back to Washington, D.C. during World War II as Solicitor of the Petroleum Administration for War, helping develop U.S. energy policy during the war, including the Cole Pipeline Act of 1941, and later as a member of the Committee on Reparations and the American Petroleum Institute.