Neal E. Kravitz

Professional career

• He was lead defense counsel in more than 20 Superior Court jury trials on behalf of indigent defendants charged with murder, rape, armed robbery, and other serious offenses, and he briefed and argued more than ten criminal cases in the Court of Appeals.
• There, he was co-lead counsel for six African-American Secret Service officers who sued the Denny’s Restaurant chain on behalf of a nationwide class alleging a corporate practice of racial discrimination against African-American customers.
• Judge Kravitz then joined the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia in 1984 as a staff attorney, where, for six years, he represented indigent criminal defendants and juvenile respondents in all stages of the criminal process in the District of Columbia Courts.
• Judge Kravitz joined the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs as a staff attorney in early 1993.
• A graduate of Yale College (1979) and Harvard Law School (1983), he began his legal career in 1983 as a law clerk to The Honorable Henry A. Politz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Judicial service

• He has presided over cases in the Superior Court’s Civil, Criminal, Family, and Domestic Violence Divisions and has sat by designation in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on many occasions.
• Neal E. Kravitz has served as a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia since his appointment in 1998 by President Bill Clinton.

Education

• Yale College · 1979
• Harvard Law School
• Harvard Law School · 1983

Personal record

Born October 18, 1957 · Fort McClellan