Yvonne M. Williams will be sworn in as an Associate Judge for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on Friday, December 16, 2011, at 4 p.m. in the third floor atrium of the Moultrie Courthouse, 500 Indiana Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. The Honorable Lee F. Satterfield, Chief Judge of the Superior Court, will preside. Associate Judge Todd E. Edelman will administer the oath of office and Hannah McElhinny, Chief of the Juvenile Section at the D.C. Public Defender Service, and Kim Keenan, General Counsel for the NAACP, will make remarks.
Ms. Williams was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Chicago, Illinois, where she graduated from Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. Ms. Williams received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, where she was the Director of the Black Recruitment and Retention Center and an elected member of the Associated Students of the University of California Senate. Ms. Williams received her Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law in 1997, where she served as a Teaching Assistant for the first year research and writing course and was Chair of the Black Law Students Association.
Upon graduation from law school, Ms. Williams received a National Association of Public Interest Law (now Equal Justice Works) Fellowship to work at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) for two years. As an attorney at LDF, Ms. Williams represented plaintiffs in federal individual and class action employment discrimination cases throughout the country. She also investigated the impact of the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which ended the Aid to Families with Children Program, on the employment opportunities of low-income African American workers.
In October of 1999, Ms. Williams began as a staff attorney in the Trial Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (“PDS”). There she represented indigent clients charged with serious felony, misdemeanor, and juvenile offenses in D.C. Superior Court. Ms. Williams also worked for a year in the PDS Appellate Division, where she wrote appellate briefs and argued several cases before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
In 2005, Ms. Williams joined Miller & Chevalier Chartered as a Senior Associate. There, she conducted and managed internal investigations, in both criminal and civil contexts, for mid-size and multi-national corporations. She also defended corporations against allegations of breach of fiduciary duty under the Employee Retirement Security Act and claims of employment discrimination, and individuals in matters involving allegations of defamation, government contracting fraud, insider trading, conspiracy, and other fraud-related allegations.
In May 2007, Ms. Williams went to work for Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, where she managed and conducted internal investigations for multi-national corporations involving alleged violations of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. In late 2008, Ms. Williams returned to Miller & Chevalier Chartered as Counsel, and remained there until her appointment to the bench. In her final years there, she litigated employment matters before federal and state courts as well as administrative agencies and represented insurance companies in challenges to insurance benefit denials and a class of individuals in significant pension benefit disputes with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.
While in private practice, Ms. Williams was very active in the Washington legal community. She remains a member of the Board of Directors of the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia, where she continues to be an advocate for the advancement and retention of women in the legal profession. She was a member of the Judicial Evaluation Committee for the D.C. Bar as well as a member of the Nominating Committee of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the D.C. Bar. Ms. Williams also served as President of the Board of Directors for D.C. Law Students in Court (“LSIC”), a non-profit organization where law students, under the supervision of LSIC staff attorneys, provide legal representation to indigent DC residents with landlord-tenant and criminal cases pending in D.C. Superior Court. For her work as a lawyer and her commitment to strengthening the legal profession, in July 2011, Ms. Williams was honored by the National Bar Association as one of the nation’s “Top 40 Lawyers Under 40.”
Ms. Williams is also very active in the Washington, D.C. community. She is a member of the Capital City Chapter of the Links, Incorporated, through which she mentors young women who are students at Dunbar Senior High School, as well as Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and the Washington, D.C. Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Incorporated.
Finally, Ms. Williams is the proud parent of a seven year old son.