The Honorable Hiram Puig-Lugo

Hiram E. Puig-Lugo is a senior judge with Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He served as an associate judge for 24 years, handling criminal felony, juvenile delinquency, criminal misdemeanor, child abuse and neglect, domestic relations, status offender, domestic violence, and civil calendars. He is a past president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ).

Judge Puig-Lugo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he was the first Latino member of the Wisconsin Law Review. After graduation, he served as staff attorney with the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia for eight years, and as trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section, for three years.

Judge Puig-Lugo was presiding judge of the Family Court from 2014 to 2016. There, he started a Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) Working Group to coordinate interagency support for court-involved victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Previously, he chaired the Court’s Neglect Subcommittee and convened a stakeholder working group to address services for LGBTQ+ youth in the neglect and juvenile delinquency systems.

He chaired the Superior Court Judicial Education Committee and sat on the D.C. Courts Standing Committee on Fairness and Access to the Courts. He served on the D.C. Access to Justice Commission and the D.C. Courts Strategic Planning Leadership Council.

Judge Puig-Lugo is one of three U.S. representatives to The Hague Judicial Network. He has trained judges in the U.S. and abroad on how to implement The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. He has taken part in bilateral meetings between the U.S. and several countries to facilitate implementation of the convention between the U.S. and those nations.

He has taught in legal education projects in Central America, South America, México, Puerto Rico, Spain, and the Federated States of Micronesia. He has presented on topics including rule of law, law of evidence, trial advocacy skills, human trafficking, judicial independence, child welfare, and alternative dispute resolution.

Judge Puig-Lugo is adjunct faculty at the Georgetown University Law Center in the American Law for Foreign-Trained Lawyers LLM Program. He teaches courses on U.S. Constitutional Law, the history of the U.S. Constitution, and U.S. Criminal Procedure. He has taught at the American University Washington College of Law, the University of the District of Columbia School of Law, the George Washington University Law School, the National Judicial College Pacific Islands Law Institute, and the University of Puerto Rico Law School.

Judge Puig-Lugo received the NCJFCJ President’s Award for Extraordinary Leadership and the National Consortium on Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts Equity Award in 2021, a special recognition award for his service to the District of Columbia from the D.C. Bar Family Law Section in 2016, the Hispanic National Bar Foundation Judicial Leadership Award in 2014, and the Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia Honorable Ricardo M. Urbina Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

Judge Puig-Lugo is from San Germán, Puerto Rico. He is equally fluent in English and Spanish and conversant in Brazilian Portuguese.