Return a Form Value for Users in Specific SharePoint/AD groups

Hi,

I have been hitting a wall for few weeks now and would appreciate any idea of feasibility.

I am building a high traffic workflow and would like to assign the day to day user management (high turn over)  to few end users. My current idea is to build a SharePoint list containing users and roles and add these roles/AD Group into the workflow. Is that possible

My second issue is that I would like to circumvent the Approval process for users added to a specific list in the Step above. I suspect that I can just run an If Statement once I am able to identify membership of that specific group in the form and use that into the workflow.

Thanks,

P