LAWYERS FOR ONE AMERICA

BIOGRAPHY

Eric Holder, Jr. was born on January 21, 1951 in New York City. He attended public schools there, graduating from Stuyvesant High School in 1969 where he earned a Regents Scholarship. He attended Columbia College, majored in American History, and graduated in 1973. Mr. Holder then attended Columbia Law School from which he graduated in 1976. While in law school he clerked at the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund and the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division.

Upon graduating from Columbia Law School, Mr. Holder moved to Washington, D.C. and joined the Department of Justice as part of the Attorney General’s Honors Program. He was assigned to the newly formed Public Integrity Section in 1976 and was tasked to investigate and prosecute official corruption on the local, state and federal levels. While at the Public Integrity Section, Mr. Holder participated in a number of prosecutions and appeals involving such defendants as the Treasurer of the state of Florida, the Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, a local judge in Philadelphia, an Assistant United States Attorney in New York City, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a “capo” in an organized crime family in Pennsylvania.

In 1988, Mr. Holder was nominated by President Reagan to become an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He was confirmed by the Senate and his investiture occurred in October of that year. Over the next five years, Judge Holder presided over hundreds of civil and criminal trials and matters. Many of the trials involved homicides and other crimes of violence.

In 1993, President Clinton nominated Mr. Holder to become the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He was confirmed later that year and served as the head of the largest United States Attorneys office in the nation for nearly four years. He was the first black person to serve in that position. As U.S. Attorney, Mr. Holder created a Domestic Violence Unit to more effectively handle those types of tragic cases, implemented a community prosecution project to work hand in hand with residents and local government agencies in order to make neighborhoods safer, supported a renewed enforcement emphasis on hate crimes so that criminal acts of intolerance would be severely punished, developed a comprehensive strategy to improve the manner in which agencies handled cases involving the abuse of children, launched a community outreach program to reconnect the U.S. Attorney’s office with the citizens it serves, revitalized the Victim/Witness Assistance Program to better serve those individuals who were directly affected by crime and developed “Operation Ceasefire”, an initiative designed to reduce violent crime by getting guns out of the hands of criminals.

In April, 1997, President Clinton nominated Mr. Holder to be the Deputy Attorney General. He was confirmed by a Senate vote of 100 to 0 and was sworn in as the Deputy Attorney General in July, 1997. He was the first African-American to serve as Deputy Attorney General. In that position Mr. Holder was responsible for the conduct of the day to day operation of the Department of Justice and supervised all of the Department’s litigating, enforcement and administrative components in both civil and criminal matters. He began the Department’s Children Exposed to Violence Initiative and made Department priorities enforcement efforts in health care fraud, computer crimes and software piracy. Mr. Holder successfully worked to fund and expand nationwide the concept of community prosecution which seeks to connect more directly prosecutors with the citizens they serve. At the request of the President, Mr. Holder began and directed Lawyers for One America a multi-agency, public/private partnership designed to diversify the legal profession and to increase the amount of pro bono work done by the nation’s attorneys. At the Department of Justice, he began the Eight Point Plan to increase and retain the number of minority and female attorneys in the organization. As Deputy Attorney General Mr. Holder was the highest ranking black person in law enforcement in the history of the United States. He then served briefly as Acting Attorney General under President Bush pending the confirmation of Attorney General Ashcroft.

In May, 2001, Mr. Holder joined the law firm of Covington and Burling in Washington, D.C. He is a litigation partner who handles, among other matters, complex civil and criminal cases, domestic and international advisory matters and internal corporate investigations.

Mr. Holder has been active for years in the organization Concerned Black Men. This group seeks to help the youth of the District of Columbia with many of the problems they face, ranging from teenage pregnancy to sub-par academic achievement. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees and serves on the boards of the Meyer Foundation, the See Forever Foundation and the I Am Your Child Foundation. Mr. Holder lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Sharon Malone, who is a doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, and their three children.