Katie Ali

Katie litigates high-stakes and high-profile cases, and her work has frequently been the subject of national news. She is one of the founding partners of the firm and before that was a litigation partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C.

Katie has briefed and argued systemic reform and civil rights issues in courts across the country. Her work includes leading several major solitary confinement cases, one of which resulted in two landmark federal court decisions and served as the catalyst for a series of follow-on suits that she and others continue to litigate. She is frequently asked to speak and consult on issues relating to the criminal legal system and the death penalty, and is someone clients and other lawyers turn to when their cases are at the Hail Mary stage.

In her commercial practice, Katie advises clients on and litigates complex civil matters at the trial and appellate levels. She is a civil procedure expert, and was the go-to brief writer in her former litigation practice. Since launching the firm, she has continued to represent clients at virtually every stage of litigation—from pre-complaint investigation through appeals—and has advised clients on a wide range of issues, from novel First Amendment questions to matters involving Title VI and the Administrative Procedure Act. Katie has also developed a robust FOIA and public records practice serving both civil rights and commercial clients.

Katie is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of California, Berkeley. She is licensed in the District of Columbia, California, and Virginia.

Since 2017, Katie has served on the Board of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, where she also sits on the Executive Committee and previously chaired the Legal Panel. She served for several years on the ABA Death Penalty Due Process Review Project’s Steering Committee, and during law school interned with the Texas Defender Service in Austin. After law school, she clerked on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Katie has been recognized by SuperLawyers as a “Rising Star” among Washington, D.C. lawyers every year since 2014. In recognition of her work on Curtis Flowers’s case, she and her team were the 2020 recipients of the Southern Center for Human Rights’s Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award and the Mississippi Center for Justice’s Champions of Justice Award. For their contributions to the capital defense bar, Katie and Liz together accepted the ABA’s 2017 Death Penalty Representation Project’s Exceptional Service Award. Katie was also awarded City Year DC’s 2016 “Idealist of the Year” award.

Bar Admissions

California
District of Columbia
Virginia

Court Admissions

U.S. Supreme Court
U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia
U.S. District Court, District of Columbia
U.S. District Court, Central District of California
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California
U.S. District Court, Southern District of California
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia
U.S. District Court, Western District of Virginia

Katie Ali

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