Neil Thomas Proto (born September 4, 1945) is an American lawyer, teacher, lecturer, and author. He chaired Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP) as a law student. He served in the Appellate Section of the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the U.S. Department of Justice. During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, he served as general counsel to the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee. Proto was appointed a visiting lecturer at Yale University in 1988 and 1989. Since 1990, while in private practice in Washington, DC, he has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. In 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London. In 2016, his one-person play, The Reckoning, Pecora for the Public, premiered in Seattle.

Proto was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Matthew and Celeste Proto. Both parents were active in New Haven’s civic and political life. His mother emigrated from Italy in 1916. He attended New Haven’s public schools. Proto’s sister, Diana (1947—), was a Milken National Educator.[1][2] His brother, Richard Proto, (1940–2008), was director of research at the U.S. National Security Agency. In 2009, a conference center was named in his honor on the NSA campus in Fort Meade, Maryland.