Paul Miller, a lawyer who was born with achondroplasia  dwarfism  overcame discrimination because of his disability and became a leader in the disability rights movement, died Tuesday at his home on Mercer Island, Wash. He was 49.

The cause was cancer, said his wife, Jennifer.

More than 40 times after graduating from Harvard Law School, Mr. Miller received rejection letters from law firms. One time, he said, he was told the firm feared that clients would see his hiring as a “circus freak show.”

But Mr. Miller went on to become an adviser to two presidents  Bill Clinton and Barack Obama  a law professor and an expert on the intersection of disability law, employment discrimination and genetic science.

A professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Mr. Miller was director of the university’s disabilities studies program. For 10 years before joining the faculty in 2004, he was a commissioner of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. At the same time, he was the Clinton administration’s liaison to disability organizations, a role he reprised in the first nine months of the Obama presidency.