Wilma A. Lewis | |
Office: | Chief Judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands |
Term Start: | August 16, 2013 |
Term End: | April 27, 2021 |
Predecessor: | Curtis V. Gomez |
Successor: | Robert A. Molloy |
Office1: | Judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands |
Nominator1: | Barack Obama |
Term Start1: | November 10, 2011 |
Predecessor1: | Raymond L. Finch |
Office2: | United States Attorney for the District of Columbia |
President2: | Bill Clinton |
Term Start2: | January 1998 |
Term End2: | April 2001 |
Predecessor2: | Mary Lou Leary (Acting) |
Successor2: | Roscoe C. Howard |
Office3: | Inspector General of the Department of the Interior |
President3: | Bill Clinton |
Term Start3: | April 10, 1995 |
Term End3: | January 8, 1998 |
Predecessor3: | Joyce Fleischman (acting) |
Successor3: | Robert Williams (acting) |
Birth Date: | 28 June 1956 |
Birth Place: | Santurce, Puerto Rico, U.S. |
Education: | Swarthmore College (BA) Harvard University (JD) |
Wilma Antoinette Lewis[1] (born June 28, 1956) is a United States district judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands. She previously served as the first female United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
Lewis was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico and raised in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.[2] Her parents, Walter and Juta Lewis, were both federal civil servants, working for the United States Postal Service and the United States Customs Service, respectively. Lewis graduated as the valedictorian of her class at All Saints Cathedral School in 1974 and earned degrees from Swarthmore College in 1978 and Harvard Law School in 1981.
Lewis worked in the litigation department at Steptoe & Johnson until 1986, when she joined the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. She rose through the civil division to become deputy chief of the division in 1993. That year, she departed for the United States Department of the Interior, where she served as Associate Solicitor for the Division of General Law. In 1995, she was nominated by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate as Inspector General of the Department of the Interior.
In 1998, Lewis was nominated and confirmed as United States attorney for the District of Columbia, the first woman to serve in that position.[3] She served from January 1998 to April 2001, when she became a partner in the litigation group at Crowell & Moring. From October 2007 to December 2008, she served as managing associate general counsel at Freddie Mac. In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Lewis to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management.[4]
In 2011 she was appointed to the District Court of the Virgin Islands.[5] In August 2013, she was named to a seven-year term as Chief Judge of the court. Her term as Chief Judge ended on April 27, 2021.[6]
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