Bijal M. Patel - City Attorney

Ms. Bijal Patel was appointed as City Attorney by the Tracy City Council on April 25, 2022. 

She came to the City of Tracy from the Oakland City Attorney's Office, where she served since 2017 in the Real Estate and Land Use & Planning units. In her role with the City of Oakland, she served as Special Counsel in the City of Oakland’s City Attorney’s Office. 

There, she was Oakland’s lead counsel for the Howard Terminal Project at the Port of Oakland, co-counsel for the Oakland-Alameda County Joint Powers Authority, and served as an advisor on other complex City projects. Prior to that, Ms. Patel served as Counsel in the Real Estate and Land Use Practice Groups at Lubin Olson & Niewiadomski LLP in San Francisco, specializing in transactional real estate and land use matters, with a focus on public/private partnerships, project development, land use entitlements, affordable housing, and eminent domain.

She spent seven years as Deputy Director of Property Development and Management for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, where she oversaw the Authority’s acquisition of hundreds of properties in the Silicon Valley for its various transportation projects, including the federally funded BART Silicon Valley Project, as well as the formation and implementation of the Authority's Joint Development Program. She also served as Deputy City Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco, on the Port of San Francisco Team, for six years.  A former tax accountant with Deloitte & Touche LLP, Ms. Patel began her legal career as a land use associate in the San Francisco office of Baker & McKenzie LLP.

Ms. Patel earned her law degree and a master’s degree in City Planning from UC Berkeley. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Speech from Houston Baptist University. Afflicted with wanderlust, Ms. Patel has traveled to over 50 countries. While in graduate school, she served as a Fulbright Scholar in Peru from 1995-1996.  She also served as a Ford Foundation Scholar in Costa Rica in the Summer of 1993, where she had the rare privilege of working directly with the former Nobel Peace Prize winner and President, Oscar Arias. She also served on the City of San Ramon Planning Commission. 

Jeffrey J. Crosswhite - Assistant City Attorney

Mr. Jeffrey Crosswhite is a Bay Area native, and came to the City of Tracy with a breadth of legal experience advising businesses, real estate developers, and public agencies in California and Oregon in transactions and litigation. He joins us from of the Tri-Valley office of Hoge, Fenton, Jones, & Appel, Inc., where he was a member of the Real Estate & Land Use Practice Group and represented commercial developers and property owners. Previously, he was Assistant General Counsel for an urban real estate development and investment firm based in Oakland, where he advised in commercial development projects, leases, financing, and cannabis real estate ventures, and as counsel in a lawsuit against the City of Oakland arising from a public-private urban redevelopment project.  Jeffrey’s litigation experience includes that with both plaintiff and defense litigation firms, premises and product liability, contract disputes, and multiple judicial clerkships with judges in California and Oregon state trial courts.  

While earning his law degree, Jeffrey worked as a Law Clerk with several public attorneys’ offices, including Marin County Counsel,  Los Angeles and Portland City Attorney’s Offices, where he focused on issues in land use, sea level rise, annexation, and environmental code enforcement. Jeffrey earned his Juris Doctor from Lewis & Clark Law School, where he focused in environmental law, business law, and land use law, with a professional interest in sustainable development. Jeffrey’s law school capstone research project studied theoretical legal challenges to municipal water rights in California on the basis of unsustainable urban sprawl. Prior to law school, Jeffrey graduated from the UC Berkeley with degrees in Mass Communications and Public Policy.

Jeffrey is passionate about empowering communities to enhance their quality of life through local government. Jeffrey has studied the legal and practical obstacles to creating equal access to quality housing. In 2023, he was published in the Daily Journal for his legal article entitled, “The Shoot First and Ask Questions Later Approach to California’s Builder’s Remedy Law.”

Kamalpreet Gill - Deputy City Attorney