Danielle Conley (NC '00)

Danielle Conley, Newcomb College graduate and Partner at Latham & Watkins, LLC, is a trusted legal adviser with deep experience in the public and private sector, represents clients in high-stakes, multifaceted legal challenges at the intersection of law, government policy, and business.

Conley graduated from Newcomb College in 2000 and went on to earn her Juris Doctor from the Howard University School of Law in 2003. Prior to joining Latham, she served as Deputy Counsel to the President in the Office of White House Counsel. In that role, Conley advised the President, Vice President and other senior White House officials in the Biden-Harris Administration on a wide array of legal issues related to voting and democracy, policing and criminal justice reform, reproductive rights, tech accountability, and judicial nominations. She established and led the first-ever White House Counsel’s Office team dedicated to civil rights and advancing racial, gender, and LGBTQ equity. Under Conley’s leadership, the team worked closely with senior officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and agency general counsels on policy, regulatory, and litigation matters related to the administration’s equity agenda. Among other high-profile efforts, Conley helped shepherd Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Before her appointment to Deputy Counsel, Conley served as the deputy on the Biden-Harris Transition’s DOJ Agency Review Team. During the Obama administration, she served as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the DOJ, where she provided strategic counsel to the Deputy Attorney General and other senior government officials on a wide range of litigation and policy issues and managed some of the agency’s most significant and high-profile civil rights enforcement matters. Prior to Conley’s government service, she was a partner in another international law firm’s Washington D.C. office, where she led the firm’s anti-discrimination practice.

Conley is a Director of Graham Holdings Company. She has also previously served on several nonprofit boards, including for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Earlier in her career, she was a fellow at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Conley has repeatedly garnered recognition for her work in the public and private sector, including from the National Law Journal, the Washington Business Journal, the Diversity Journal, The Root, and Essence Magazine.