A former Baylor athletic department employee who was fired in the wake of the investigation into the university's handling of sexual assault complaints has filed a defamation and negligence lawsuit against the law firm and attorneys who conducted the investigation.

Thomas Hill, a former assistant athletic director for community relations and special projects, was fired in late May after 28 years at Baylor. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Waco, Texas, accuses Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton of negligence and defamation and asks for $60,000 in damages.

Hill and another athletic department employee were terminated, alongside former Baylor football head coach Art Briles, after the board of regents reviewed the findings from Pepper Hamilton's investigation into how the school responded to students who reported sexual assaults and domestic violence. The investigation led to the suspension of former athletic director Ian McCaw and removal of Ken Starr as president; both men would later resign from Baylor all together.

Hill's attorney Don Riddle said Hill sued Pepper Hamilton and not Baylor because, "Pepper Hamilton is the core culprit in this entire hysterical clamor."

He said the university was the victim of a "terribly flawed and biased effort by its hired specialists."

Recent critics of the university's actions - including the decision to fire Briles - have targeted Baylor's board of regents, with a newly-formed advocacy group Bears for Leadership Reform calling for the regents to be more transparent. But Riddle said the regents were "honest, upstanding, dedicated leaders in their professions and their communities."

"Possibly some of the members of Baylor's current Board have made mistakes in judgment, but they have been honest and well-intentioned mistakes," he wrote in an email. "The seminal mistakes were undeniably caused by the inexcusable negligent, wrongful and intentional conduct of the biased investigators who, with beautiful credentials, failed to honestly and properly perform."

In recent months, Hill has been mentioned in the context of how Baylor athletic department officials responded to an alleged gang rape of a former Baylor volleyball player by a number of Baylor football players.

According to a statement from Baylor, the alleged assault, which occurred in 2012, was reported in April 2013 to then head volleyball coach Jim Barnes, who reported it to McCaw, Briles and Hill -- who was then the administrator for the volleyball team. According to the statement, none of those individuals reported the assault to judicial affairs, although Barnes has reportedly since disputed that account.

At the time, Hill said he was never provided any information as to why he was fired. In July 2016, in response to his firing, Hill filed a petition in Dallas County Court demanding the university allow him to interview three regents and turn over the materials Pepper Hamilton used in its investigation to determine if Hill would have grounds for a wrongful termination lawsuit. Hill later withdrew the petition and reached a financial settlement with Baylor.

In an interview with "Outside the Lines" in July, Hill said that during his meeting with Pepper Hamilton attorneys months earlier, he was asked if he was aware of a rape involving a volleyball player.

Hill said he told them that Barnes had stopped by his office and told him there had been a sexual encounter between a football player and a volleyball player. Hill said Barnes told him that it had already been reported to McCaw.

"[Barnes] indicated that he had had conversations with Briles prior to seeing me," Hill said in his July interview. "And he stopped by my office only to give me a pass-by FYI that he was discussing this issue with them. That was it. The issue was a potential sexual incident with a football player and a volleyball player."

Hill said he never knew the name of the football player or the volleyball player and he never knew specifically that it was a rape.

"Really, he didn't give me a lot of details," Hill said, adding that Barnes didn't tell him it was rape -- only that it was a "sexual encounter."

Hill said he called McCaw shortly after Barnes stopped by his office, but Hill said he did not learn any more details about the incident from that conversation. Hill said he told Pepper Hamilton investigators everything he knew. Since then, multiple sources have told "Outside the Lines" that Hill was fired because he was not initially forthcoming with the Pepper Hamilton investigators and not because of anything he did or did not do regarding reporting the alleged assault. Although Pepper Hamilton reported on the actions of several university and athletic department employees to the board of regents, it did not dictate any specific personnel changes.

The lawsuit, which also names as individual defendants Pepper Hamilton attorneys Leslie Gomez and Gina Smith, accuses the attorneys of being "negligent in the performance of the duties they undertook for the benefit of the university, and this negligence was a proximate cause of damages sustained by plaintiff."

A representative for Pepper Hamilton released a statement on Wednesday, which stated, in part, that "the suit has no merit and Pepper will vigorously defend the suit."

The lawsuit goes on to state that the attorneys failed to get all of the "pertinent and important facts" from witnesses, that they did not interview or interrogate several important witnesses and that they "did not perform their duties objectively and with an open mind." It states that negligence also led to Hill being libeled, slandered and defamed and, as a result, unable to get another job.

A summary of Pepper Hamilton's findings that the university released in May stated the attorneys reviewed emails, mobile device data and documents and interviewed 65 individuals, including current and former student and employees from multiple departments, with many being interviewed more than once, "to allow for a full and fair opportunity to reconcile and synthesize information in the context of documents and available information from other interviews."

Hill's lawsuit comes just five days after Briles filed a lawsuit against Baylor, accusing three regents and a vice president of libel and slander -- and for conspiring to prevent him from getting another coaching job. Briles reached an undisclosed financial settlement with the school in June, although several sources have pegged it at about $17 million.