Jennifer Williams has been a staff attorney with the Appellate Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia for six years. As an appellate attorney, Ms. Williams represents clients from PDS’s Trial and Civil divisions on appeal, drafting briefs and arguing on behalf of clients before the DC Court of Appeals. Before starting at PDS, Ms. Williams spent two years as a law fellow at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, AL. At the EJI, Ms. Williams represented clients on Alabama’s death row in their direct appeals and represented clients originally sentenced to life without parole as children.

In 2014, Ms. Williams graduated from Stanford Law School, where she participated in the Criminal Defense Clinic, representing clients at the trial and appellate levels. During law school, she completed summer clerkships with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Bronx Defenders, and the Center for Court Innovation. Before law school, Ms. Williams worked at the Prison Law Office in Berkeley, CA, assisting with class action lawsuits challenging conditions of confinement in California prisons. She graduated from Yale University in 2010.