Ariel Levinson-Waldman
Adjunct Professor of Law

B.S., Northwestern University; J.D., University of Chicago

Ariel B. Levinson-Waldman has experience in all three branches of government and as a litigator in private practice. Since January 2011, Ariel has served as the Senior Counsel to the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Irvin Nathan, where his portfolio includes the full range of civil and criminal legal issues as well as policy matters in the Office of the Attorney General. He advises the Executive Office of the Mayor on a wide range of issues, and has represented the District government in trial and appellate courts in several significant cases involving the Home Rule Act and other issues. Previously, he served from 2009-2011 by appointment of Speaker Nancy Pelosi as Assistant Counsel in the Office of General Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he advised Members and Committees of Congress on legal matters and received a Tribute for Distinguished Service for his representation of the House in the investigation and litigation related to impeachment proceedings against a federal judge. Before that, he was in private practice from 2004 to 2009 in the District with Wilmer Hale’s Government and Regulatory Litigation and Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation groups, where he co-led on behalf of the NAACP the successful federal court defense of the constitutionality of the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Prior to joining WilmerHale, he served as a law clerk to Judge Robert H. Henry of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and to Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and completed a term as Special Election Protection Counsel at the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and has taught there and elsewhere on topics ranging from the relationship between Congress and the Department of Justice to the legal and policy challenges of the District of Columbia government, to statutory interpretation. He is a 1996 graduate of Northwestern University and a 2001 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a member of The University of Chicago Law Review. In the Spring 2013 Semester, he will be teaching a course at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law on State and Local Government. Ariel is a proud resident of the District, where he lives with his wife Rachel Levinson-Waldman, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice, and their daughter Sarah.