President Obama Nominates Three to Superior Court of the District of Columbia

WASHINGTON – Today, President Obama nominated Jennifer Di Toro, Donna Murphy, and Yvonne M. Williams to serve as Associate Justices of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

“Throughout their careers, these individuals have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to justice,” said President Obama.  “I am proud to nominate them to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.”

Jennifer Di Toro: Nominee for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
Jennifer Di Toro is the Legal Director at 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. Prior to joining the Children’s Law Center in 2004, she served as a staff attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia in the Trial and Special Litigation Divisions. Di Toro was also an attorney at Zuckerman Spaeder, LLP and a Prettyman Fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Criminal Justice Clinic. From 2009 to 2010, she was a Harvard Law School Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow.  Di Toro earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1989, an M.Phil. in Modern British Literature from the University of Oxford in 1991, a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1997 and an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1999.

Donna Murphy: Nominee for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
Donna Murphy has devoted majority of her career serving in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. She began as a Trial Attorney, and went on to serve, respectively, as Deputy Chief of the Voting Section, Special Counsel for Police Matters, and Deputy Chief of the Special Litigation Section. In 2003, she was promoted to her current post as Principal Deputy Chief for Housing and Civil Enforcement Section, where she manages the Section’s enforcement of federal statutes prohibiting discrimination in credit and lending. Before joining the Department of Justice, she clerked for the Honorable Myron H. Thompson on the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Alabama. Murphy graduated summa cum laude from American University in 1986, and from Yale Law School in 1989.

Yvonne M. Williams: Nominee for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
Yvonne M. Williams is Counsel at Miller and Chevalier Chartered, where she primarily practices in the litigation of employment, employee benefits, and health care issues before federal and state trial and appellate courts, as well as administrative agencies.  Before joining private practice, Williams was a trial attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia for five years.  Prior to that, she was a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and a fellow with the National Association for Public Interest Law.  Williams graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, and from Northeastern University School of Law in 1997.