The Honorable Cheryl M. Long

Cheryl M. Long is a Senior Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 to serve as an Associate Judge. Judge Long has tried cases in every division of the Court: Criminal, Civil, Family, Probate, and Tax. She has sat by designation several times on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, both as an Associate Judge and as a Senior Judge.

Judge Long served for several years in the dual roles of Presiding Judge of the Probate Division and the Tax Division. These assignments involved adjudicating all types of fiduciary matters, determining the fair market value of commercial properties, and deciding unique questions of administrative law. Otherwise in her judicial career, Judge Long was the first woman judge to serve on all three calendars of the most complex Superior Court cases: Felony I, Civil I, and Domestic Relations I.

From 1974 to 1975, Judge Long clerked for the Hon. Spottswood W. Robinson, III on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She then served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, prosecuting cases in the federal and local courts through 1979. From 1980 to 1982, she was a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the United States Attorney’s Office, handling defense litigation on behalf of many federal agencies in cases involving torts, contracts, injunctive relief, employment discrimination, and administrative law.

From 1982 to 1985, as a trial attorney in the Division of Land and Natural Resources at the United States Department of Justice, Judge Long litigated environmental enforcement suits under the Superfund law, the Clean Water Act, as well as prosecuting criminal offenses under related regulatory laws.

In April 1985, the Board of Trustees of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia appointed Judge Long to be the agency’s new Director. At that time, she became the first African-American woman to head a public defender office in any major American city. During the same period, the Judges of the United States District Court of the District of Columbia appointed her to its Committee on Grievances, investigating ethical violations by attorneys practicing before that federal court. She served as Director until appointed to the Superior Court.

Judge Long is a Life Member of both the Washington Bar Association and the National Association of Women Judges.

EDUCATION:
1971: B.S.F.S. degree Georgetown University School of Foreign Service;
1974: J.D. degree, Georgetown University Law Center