Wilma A. Lewis

Wilma A. Lewis (born June 23, 1956) is the current chief judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands. She previously served as the first female United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Lewis was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico and raised in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.[1] Her parents, Walter and Juta Lewis, were both federal civil servants, working for the United States Postal Service and the United States Customs Service, respectively. Lewis graduated as the valedictorian of her class at All Saints Cathedral School in 1974 and earned degrees from Swarthmore College in 1978 and Harvard Law School in 1981. She worked in the litigation department at Steptoe & Johnson until 1986, when she joined the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. She rose through the civil division to become deputy chief of the division in 1993. That year, she departed for the United States Department of the Interior, where she served as Associate Solicitor for the Division of General Law. In 1995, she was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate as Inspector General of the Department of the Interior.

In 1998, Lewis was nominated and confirmed as United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, the first woman to serve in that position.[2] She served from January 1998 to April 2001, when she became a partner in the litigation group at Crowell & Moring. From October 2007 to December 2008, she served as managing associate general counsel at Freddie Mac. In 2009, Barack Obama nominated Lewis to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management.[3] She served in that position until 2011, when she was appointed to the District Court of the Virgin Islands.[4] In August 2013, she was named to a seven-year term as Chief Judge of the court.

References

  1. ↑ Hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, on the nomination of Wilma A. Lewis to be Inspector General, Department of the Interior, February 13, 1995.
  2. ↑ "Wilma A. Lewis '81 nominated to be assistant secretary for Land and Mineral Management". Harvard Law Today. May 12, 2009.
  3. ↑ Hearing before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, on the nominations of Wilma A. Lewis, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Interior; the nomination of Richard G. Newell, to be Administrator of the Energy Information Administration; and the nomination of Robert V. Abbey, to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management, July 9, 2009.
  4. ↑ The Hon. Wilma A. Lewis, American Law Institute.
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