Whitney Tymas

Whitney Tymas is an attorney with over 30 years of experience in criminal law. She has led initiatives to promote fairness and accountability and has taught and presented widely across the nation. Whitney advises individuals, organizations and political action committees, such as Justice & Public Safety PAC, Justice & Public Safety Action Fund and others, about justice policy and strategy. In 2015, Whitney launched a national initiative focused on electing progressive local prosecutors, committed to equity and public safety. Since then, she has overseen over forty campaigns in prosecutor and sheriff races across the country. Before this, Whitney served as director of the Prosecution and Racial Justice Program at the Vera Institute of Justice. This groundbreaking national program identified and sought to remedy patterns of racial injustice and ethnic disparity caused by prosecutors. Beginning in New York City as a public defender with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, Whitney also practiced law at the Office of the Appellate Defender, the Legal Aid Society Criminal Appeals Bureau, as a prosecutor in Virginia, and in private practice as a defense and civil rights attorney. Whitney has practiced in state and federal courts, at the trial and appellate levels, handling a wide range of criminal cases, from misdemeanors to multiple defendant homicides. Whitney is a graduate of Barnard College and New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Snow Scholar. She was born in Washington, DC, came to adulthood in Harlem, and has devoted her life to public service and social justice.