Ryan was also Pinellas County Lead County Counsel for the Obama for America campaign. In that role, he was responsible for coordinating over 100 lawyers and working to ensure a fair election for the citizens of Pinellas County, Florida.

Ryan currently serves on the Labor and Employment Law Certification Committee of The Florida Bar. This committee is responsible for determining if attorneys should be certified in labor & employment law.

Ryan is a past-chair and vice-chair of the Federal Court Practice Committee of The Florida Bar and is a past chair of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the Hillsborough County Bar Association. He is a frequent author and speaker on labor and employment law issues. In addition, Ryan has appeared on local television news to discuss employment law issues and been quoted by the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times on employment law issues. Ryan was named one of the "Forty Under Forty" by the Tampa Bay Review, which recognized leading attorneys under age forty in the Tampa Bay area.

Ryan attended law school at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at College of William and Mary, where he was a member of the William and Mary Law Review. Ryan attended law school as a Graduate Research Fellow, meaning he was one of thirteen students selected for a three-year merit based tuition waiver and research fellowship. As part of this fellowship, Ryan provided research assistance to Professor Rodney Smolla, including researching and drafting updates for Smolla, Federal Civil Rights and Smolla and Nimmer on Freedom of Speech. Ryan received my undergraduate education at Vanderbilt University where he had majors in political science and secondary education.

From the fall of 1998 through the spring of 2004 (and during the summer of 1997) Ryan was associated with the Tampa, Florida law firm of Zinober & McCrea, P.A.  At Zinober & McCrea, Ryan exclusively represented and advised only employers in federal and state litigation and administrative proceedings on various employment and civil rights issues, including Title VII, ADA, ADEA, FMLA, FLSA, Section 1983, Rehabilitation Act, FCRA, ERISA, False Claims Act, Florida Whistleblower Act, Fair Housing Act, non-compete and trade secret litigation. Although Zinober & McCrea is no longer in existence, many of the lawyers are now with Greenberg Trauig.

In the spring of 2004, Ryan left Zinober & McCrea to become a shareholder with the firm now known as Kwall, Showers & Barack. At Kwall, Showers & Barack his practice continues to be almost exclusively labor and employment litigation.