Blume Leaders in Residence Program 2024 Class

Jim Davy

Residency Dates: Wednesday, September 18 – Friday, September 20, 2024. 

Jim Davy is the founder of All Rise Trial & Appellate, where he litigates public interest appeals in courts across the country. His work covers topics including but not limited to police and prison misconduct (and related doctrines like qualified immunity), Title IX and sex discrimination, open records, gun safety, workers’ rights, digital privacy, criminal procedure, and Section 230 of the CDA. Since founding the organization in 2021, he has won ten appeals on a variety of topics, including the first appellate opinion holding that schools can be liable under Title IX for deliberate indifference to sex-based harassment by non-student guests, see Hall v. Millersville, 22 F.4th 397 (3d Cir. 2022). He has also filed nearly fifty amicus briefs on behalf of organizations like the ACLU, Public Justice, the National Women’s Law Center, the MacArthur Justice Center, and the National Police Accountability Project, and he has raised more than $250,000 to fund the organization.

Prior to founding All Rise Trial & Appellate, he worked at civil rights nonprofits in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., was a fellow at the nation’s largest labor union, and clerked for the Hon. L. Felipe Restrepo of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He graduated from Duke University in 2008, and from Georgetown Law in 2015.

Samantha Ondrade

Residency Dates: Wednesday, October 2 – Friday, October 4, 2024

Samantha Ondrade is Counsel to Senator Cory A. Booker for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism. In this role, she manages a broad legislative and oversight portfolio covering a range of policy issues, including civil rights, criminal justice, corrections, federal sentencing, the U.S. Supreme Court and federal judiciary, and executive and Article III judicial nominations.

Prior to joining the Senate, Samantha was a Trial Attorney and Coordinator of the Combatting Redlining Initiative with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in the Housing & Civil Enforcement Section, where she developed, investigated, and litigated fair housing and fair lending cases. Among other matters, Samantha co-led a trial team that obtained a jury verdict and judgment on behalf of individuals with disabilities who were denied reasonable accommodations by their condominium association and led investigations that resulted in consent decrees requiring national and community banks to invest more than $15 million in redlined communities of color in Memphis, Tennessee and Providence, Rhode Island. For her work, Samantha was awarded the Assistant Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award and a Special Commendation Award.

Previously, Samantha was an Associate with Williams & Connolly LLP where she worked on complex civil litigation and maintained an active pro bono practice, including as trial counsel for a client charged with armed robbery.

Samantha received her J.D., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University Law Center. Following graduation, she served as a judicial law clerk to Judge Albert Diaz on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and to Judge Amit P. Mehta on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Connor Leighton-Cory

Residency Dates: Wednesday, October 16 – Friday, October 18, 2024

Connor Leighton-Cory (he/him) grew up in Montana and now resides in Maine with his spouse and new baby. After attending Georgetown University Law Center, he worked as a Skadden Fellow and then an Immigration Staff Attorney at Whitman-Walker Health, where he represented LGBTQ+ individuals and people living with HIV seeking various forms of humanitarian and family-based immigration relief. Currently, he is a Staff Attorney at Immigration Equality where he continues his immigration practice on behalf of LGBTQ clients. In his free time, Connor loves canoeing and skiing, but most of all he loves spending time with his new baby.

Angelica Salceda

Residency Dates: Wednesday, October 30 – Friday, November 1, 2024 (Virtual)

Angélica Salceda is the director of the ACLU of Northern California’s Democracy and Civic Engagement Program. In her capacity, Angélica supervises and supports a team of attorneys and legal-policy assistants who work on voting rights, open government, and free speech issues. She focuses both on policy and litigation, providing strategic vision and leadership that shapes the work of the Program.

In her previous role as a staff attorney at the ACLU, she worked on a range of issues including immigrants’ rights, economic justice, open government, reproductive justice, and voting rights. While working on immigrants’ rights issue, she was counsel on Zepeda Rivas v. Jennings, a federal constitutional challenge to conditions of confinement during the COVID pandemic. She was also part of the litigation team in Lyon v. I.C.E., a class action on behalf of immigrant detainees in northern California to address the lack of reasonable telephone access in immigration detention facilities, a condition of confinement that prevents immigrants from fully and fairly litigating their deportation cases. She was also successful in settling a Federal Torts Claim act on behalf of two Guatemalan teenage sisters who were assaulted by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer.

Prior to joining the ACLU as a staff attorney, Angélica was an Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by Fenwick & West. As an Equal Justice Works Fellow, Angélica led a project to identify and remove educational barriers impacting pregnant and parenting students in California’s Central Valley.

Angélica is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law and received her undergraduate degree in Political Science and History with a minor in Anthropology from University of California, Los Angeles. She was a 2007-2008 Jesse M. Unruh Assembly Fellow and a legislative aid in the California Assembly.

Alyssa Lareau

Residency Dates: Wednesday, November 13 – Friday, November 15

Alyssa Lareau has worked for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice since 2009.  She first served as a Trial Attorney in the Special Litigation Section where she was involved in investigating adult and juvenile correctional facilities and police departments for constitutional violations. She currently works in the Division’s Federal Coordination and Compliance Section where she coordinates with federal agencies to ensure consistent enforcement of civil rights statutes and Executive Orders that prohibit discrimination in federally conducted and assisted programs and activities. There, she has worked on investigations and lawsuits brought under laws prohibiting race and sex discrimination, including challenges to gender-affirming care bans. Ms. Lareau has also served as representative to Civil Rights Division’s LGBTQI+ working group for the last fifteen years, previously serving as its co-chair and currently serving as the co-chair of the working group’s criminal justice subcommittee. Ms. Lareau received her B.A. from the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a Public Interest Law Scholar (Blume program predecessor). In 2012 she was selected as one of The National LGBT Bar Association’s Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40. Ms. Lareau is participating as a Blume Public Interest Leader in Residence in her personal capacity and any opinions expressed during the course of her participation in the program are her own and do not reflect the views of the Department of Justice or the United States government.

Mehwish Shaukat

Residency Dates: Wednesday, February 19 – Friday, February 21, 2025

Mehwish Shaukat is an Equal Justice Works fellow in the MacArthur Justice Center’s Supreme Court and Appellate Program. Her practice focuses on fighting in federal appellate courts nationwide to protect religious liberties in prison. She litigates prison conditions, solitary confinement, and civil rights cases.

Prior to joining MJC, Mehwish was a litigation associate at O’Melveny & Myers, where she maintained a robust pro bono practice in prisoners’ rights litigation and immigration. Her experience includes litigating an excessive confinement and parole case in the California Supreme Court, obtaining multiple asylum victories, and representing families separated at the border. In 2020, she published a law review article titled American Muslim Women: Who We Are and What We Demand From Feminist Jurisprudence.

Mehwish received her J.D. from Northwestern Law School where she was an editor for the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, was a student in the Death Penalty Clinic, and conducted senior research on the police’s practice of forcibly removing hijab.

Rachel Cicurel

Residency Dates: Wednesday, Marcy 26 – Friday, March 28

Rachel Cicurel is a Supervising Attorney in the Trial Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS), where she represents individuals charged with felony crimes in D.C. Superior Court. She became a trial attorney at PDS in 2016, upon graduating from Georgetown University Law Center. At Georgetown, Rachel was an evening student and Public Interest Law Scholar in what is now called the Blume Public Interest Scholars Program. Prior to law school, Rachel worked at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project following her undergraduate graduation from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.