Mary is the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Virginia. After receiving her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was a Public Interest Law Scholar, she joined the Office of the Federal Defender of San Diego Inc. She had a short stint in private practice in San Diego, with a focus on
federal criminal defense and then came east where she worked for the ABA Death Penalty Project and then became a state public defender in Alexandria. She was one of the founding members of the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia (Richmond Division), where she worked for 23 years before being named the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Virginia.