Dr. Richards graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and completed surgical internship at the University of Florida. He completed surgical residency at the University of Maryland and then completed a fellowship in endoscopy and portal hypertension at Emory University under the direction of W. Dean Warren, MD, and a research fellowship in GI physiology at Vanderbilt University under the direction of Lester Williams, MD.
After fellowship he was a faculty member at Vanderbilt University where he directed the Fellowship in Minimally Invasive Surgery and directed the Vanderbilt Center for Surgical Weight Loss prior to 2009. He is currently the Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery and the Director of the University of South Alabama Weight Loss Surgery Center.
He is the author of the Chapter on Morbid Obesity in Sabiston's Textbook of Surgery.