Draft:Amir Ali (lawyer)

Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali (born 1985) is an American attorney and law professor. Ali is a nominee to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Education
Ali received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada in 2008 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 2011.

Career
After graduating, Ali served as a law clerk for Judge Raymond C. Fisher of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2011 to 2012 and for Justice Marshall Rothstein of the Supreme Court of Canada from 2012 to 2013. From 2013 to 2017, Ali practiced at the law firm Jenner & Block. He also argued and won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court as a fifth-year associate. Since 2021, Ali has been the executive director of the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit law firm founded by businessman and philanthropist J. Roderick MacArthur. Since 2018, Ali has been a professor at Harvard Law School, where he directs the law school's criminal justice appellate clinic. Ali has also served as an adjunct professor of litigation and constitutional law at the University of District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law and Georgetown Law School. He served on the board of directors of the Appellate Project.

Nomination to district court
On January 10, 2024, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Ali to serve as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. On February 1, 2024, President Biden nominated Ali to a seat vacated by Judge Beryl Howell, who assumed senior status on February 1, 2024. On February 8, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During his hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham questioned him over his leadership of the MacArthur Center and statements made by the group's previous director, who said in 2020 that advocates for defunding police agencies were part of a "movement toward making police departments obsolete." Ali responded, "I do not believe law enforcement is or should be obsolete, or defunded." On March 7, 2024, his nomination was favorably reported out of committee by an 11–10 party-line vote. His nomination is pending before the United States Senate. If confirmed, Ali would be the first Arab American federal judge to serve in D.C.

Notable cases
In 2018, Ali represented Louisiana prisoner Corey Williams before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Williams v. Louisiana. Williams had been wrongfully convicted of capital murder in 1998 at the age of 16, and spent over twenty years at Angola Penitentiary. In response to Ali's petition, the District Attorney agreed to the immediate release of Williams.

In 2019, Ali argued for the petitioner in Garza v. Idaho, and obtained a 6-3 majority opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court establishing that a criminal defendant has the constitutional right to an appeal that has been forfeited by his attorney, even if the defendant's plea agreement states that it waives the right of appeal.

In 2022, Ali argued for the petitioner in Thompson v. Clark, and obtained a 6-3 majority opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh recognizing a federal cause of action against police officers who pursue false charges against someone.