Craig E. Leen

Craig E. Leen is a judge, former public administrator, and academic, who has served in government at the federal, county, and municipal levels, as well as in the private sector. Judge Leen is an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and he also serves as the 139th President of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.

Prior to being sworn in, Judge Leen was a partner in the DC office of K&L Gates LLP, where he was in the Litigation and Labor, Employment, and Workplace Safety practice.

Judge Leen formerly served as a federal agency head in the U.S. Department of Labor as the Director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), where he led a premier civil rights enforcement agency, reporting directly to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Labor.

Prior to moving to Washington, Judge Leen served as City Attorney of the City of Coral Gables, where he was the general counsel and chief legal officer for a full-service municipality in Florida. He was previously the Chief of the Appeals Section and then Chief of the Federal Litigation Section at the Miami-Dade County Attorney’s Office, where he was a counsel of record in 50 federal civil rights cases and handled many appeals at the federal and state level.

Judge Leen teaches Government Lawyering, Disability Rights Law, and Local Government Law at GW Law, where he received the Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award from the graduating Class of 2025. He previously taught classes in numerous subjects at the Florida International University College of Law and University of Miami School of Law and has published articles in the Stetson Law Review and FIU Law Review, as well as other publications. He also served as faculty lead for an issue of the FIU Law Review in 2017.

Judge Leen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert E. Keeton, United States District Judge, District of Massachusetts.