President Obama has nominated three Washington lawyers to serve as judges for the District of Columbia Superior Court.
If confirmed, Jennifer Di Toro, Donna Murphy and Yvonne Williams would fill the vacancies created by the retirements of judges Kaye Christian, Brook Hedge and Judith Retchin.
Di Toro, Murphy and Williams come from three different areas of the law.
Di Toro is the legal director of the Children’s Law Center, where she focuses on seeking safe, permanent homes and access to education and health care for children and families in the District of Columbia. She is a former public defender in Washington and has worked at Zuckerman Spaeder. Di Toro earned her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University, her M.Phil. from the University of Oxford, her J.D. from Stanford Law School and her LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center.
Murphy is principle deputy chief of the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, a post she has held since 2003. She has also served as s trial attorney, deputy chief of the Voting Section, special counsel for police matters and deputy chief of the Special Litigation Section. She earned her undergraduate degree from American University and her J.D. from Yale Law School.
Williams comes from the world of Big Law. She is of counsel to Miller & Chevalier, and focuses her practice on litigating employment, employee benefits and health care disputes before federal and state trial and appellate courts, as well as administrative agencies. Before going into private practice, Williams was a trial attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia for five years. She has also served as a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.
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