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Beryl Alaine Howell (born December 3, 1956) is an American attorney and jurist who serves as a Senior status United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was appointed to the District of Columbia federal court in 2010 by President Barack Obama, and she served as its chief judge from 2016 to 2023. As chief judge, she supervised federal grand juries in the district, including for the Mueller special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and investigations into attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
Howell graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy with honors. From 1978 to 1980, Howell worked as a legal assistant at the law firm Shanley & Fisher (now part of Faegre Drinker). She then attended Columbia Law School, graduating in 1983 with a Juris Doctor as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
From 1987 to 1993, Howell was an assistant United States attorney for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, where she became deputy chief of the Narcotics section. From 1993 to 2003, Howell served on the staff of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a senior advisor to Chairman Patrick Leahy, including as the committee's general counsel starting in 1997.
While working for Senator Leahy, Howell helped craft the E-FOIA amendments, which expanded electronic access to government records. She also helped Sen. Leahy fend off proposals to impose new limits on the FOIA. In 2001, she was honored by the Coalition to Support and Expand the Freedom of Information Act, and in 2004, her FOIA work was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists.
Howell was involved in crafting numerous pieces of legislation for the investigation and prosecution of computer crime and copyright infringement, including the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), the No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999.
Howell was involved in national security issues, including the creation of the USA PATRIOT Act, which she defended in 2005 in an article for the Pennsylvania Bar Association Quarterly.
The Center for Democracy and Technology lists Howell as a "board alum".
From 2004 to 2010, she served as a member of the United States Sentencing Commission after being appointed by President George W. Bush.
In 2008, Howell served as a member of the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency, sponsored by bipartisan think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In 2018, Howell struck down a regulation of the Federal Election Commission allowing dark money groups, certain nonprofit organizations engaged in political activities, to conceal their donors. She wrote that the regulation "blatantly undercuts the congressional goal of fully disclosing the sources of money flowing into federal political campaigns, and thereby suppresses the benefits intended to accrue from disclosure."
The Supreme Court later declined to review the decision.
In that same year, Howell became the supervising judge for the grand jury working for special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. On October 25, 2019, she ruled in favor of the House Judiciary Committee, which had sought grand jury materials from the Mueller investigation, finding their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump to be a judicial proceeding. Justice Department attorneys had previously asserted that congressional investigators had "not yet exhausted their available discovery tools,” arguments Howell said "smack of farce," as the administration had openly stated it would Stonewalling the investigation.
In May 2025, Judge Howell issued a permanent injunction blocking the executive order in its entirety; citing "No American president has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all executive branch agencies but in purpose and effect this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare who penned the phrase "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"... The importance of independent lawyers to ensuring the American judicial systems fair and impartial administration of justice has been recognized in this country since its founding era in 1770... The instant case presents an unprecedented attack on these founding principles."
Champion Award
In November 2023 at a meeting of the Women's White Collar Defense Association, Howell received the Champion Award for people who advance opportunities for women in "the white collar field". In her acceptance speech, she said: "My D.C. judicial colleagues and I regularly see the impact of big lies at the sentencing of hundreds, hundreds of individuals who have been convicted for offense conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, when they disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Capitol." She also cited historian Heather Cox Richardson’s book, Democracy Awakening. The next month, Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, filed a complaint of judicial misconduct in which she alleged that Howell's remarks were "conduct unbecoming of a federal judge".
Lobbying
From 2004 to 2009, U.S. Copyright Surveillance Machine About To Be Switched On, Promises of Transparency Already Broken, Electronic Frontier Foundation, November 15, 2012. Howell was executive vice president, executive managing director, and general counsel at Stroz Friedberg, a global digital risk management and investigations firm. Howell's work at Stroz Friedberg included lobbying on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America,RIAA lobbying data (public record) as published by OpenSecrets.org for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.Stroz Frieberg lobbying data (public record) as published by OpenSecrets.org for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. and, briefly, Universal Music Group.Stroz Frieberg lobbying data (public record) as published by OpenSecrets.org for 2005
Academic
Howell teaches legal ethics as an adjunct professor at the American University's Washington College of Law.
Federal judicial service
On July 14, 2010, Howell was nominated by President Barack Obama to the United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seat being vacated by Judge Paul L. Friedman, who assumed senior status on December 31, 2009. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 22, 2010. She received her judicial commission on December 27, 2010. She served as the chief judge from March 17, 2016, to March 17, 2023. She assumed senior status on February 1, 2024. A 2015 analysis by Ravel Law found Howell to be the second most-cited district court judge appointed in the previous five years.
Notable decisions
In 2011, Harold Hodge Jr. stood outside the U.S. Supreme Court wearing a sign that protested the American government's treatment of black and Hispanic people. He did so in violation of a 1949 federal law that makes such protests a crime. Hodge sued the Marshal of the United States Supreme Court and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia under the First Amendment. In a June 2013 decision, Howell struck down the law as violating the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. The judge wrote, "The absolute prohibition on expressive activity in the statute is unreasonable, substantially overbroad and irreconcilable with the First Amendment." The defendants appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which reversed Howell's decision and reinstated the law as it applies to the Supreme Court Plaza and steps. Hodge v. Talkin, 799 F. 3d 1145 (D.C. Cir. 2015).
Personal life
Howell is married to Michael Rosenfeld, an executive producer at National Geographic Television & Film. They have three children.
Publications
See also
External links
Categories: 1956 Births, Living People, 20th-century American Lawyers, 21st-century American Lawyers, 21st-century American Women Judges, 21st-century American Women Lawyers, Assistant United States Attorneys, Bryn Mawr College Alumni, Columbia Law School Alumni, American Jews, Members Of The United States Sentencing Commission, United States District Court Judges Appointed By Barack Obama
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