President Obama is nominating Jeffrey R. Moreland, a former senior attorney with BNSF Railway and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, to join Amtrak’s board of directors.

Amtrak is poised to participate in billions of dollars of government stimulus grants to expand inter-city passenger rail service, much of which will come by running more passenger trains on tracks owned by freight railroads.

Moreland was most recently executive vice president for public affairs at BNSF, where he oversaw economic regulatory policy and state government relations as well as corporate communications. 

Earlier, he was BNSF’s executive vice president for law and government affairs and had been its general counsel.

He worked eight years at the Securities and Exchange Commission before joining Santa Fe Railroad in 1978, the White House said. He became general counsel there in 1988, and in 1994 became vice president for law and general counsel of the parent company, Santa Fe Pacific. It later merged with Burlington Northern to form BNSF.