Biography of Joan Lorraine Goldfrank
Joan Lorraine Goldfrank is a Magistrate Judge of the Superior Court of the
District of Columbia. She was appointed on September 23, 2002. She also serves as the
Chair of the Court’s Commission on Mental Health.
Magistrate Judge Goldfrank received her B.A. degree, cum laude, with honors in
History, in 1973 from Emory University, and her J.D. in 1976 from Emory University
School of Law. She has lived in the District of Columbia since 1977. She was raised in
New York.
Prior to her appointment to the Superior Court, Magistrate Judge Goldfrank was
an attorney with the Department of Justice from1994. Beginning in April1999, she was
Senior Legal Advisor in the Department of Justice’s Professional Responsibility
Advisory Office, the office responsible for providing training and definitive advice
regarding professional responsibility issues to Department of Justice attorneys, including
the United States Attorneys. She had been a Senior Attorney in the Department’s
Environment and Natural Resources Division and an Assistant Counsel in the
Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
From 1985 to 1994, Magistrate Judge Goldfrank was the Executive Attorney to
the District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility. Prior to her serving as the
Executive Attorney, she was a staff attorney in the Legal Advisor’s Office at Saint
Elizabeth’s Hospital. Magistrate Judge Goldfrank was in private practice as an associate
at Collier, Shannon, Rill and Scott from 1980 to 1984. In 1979, she was Associate
Counsel to President Carter’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. She
began her legal career as a trial attorney at the United States Department of Energy.
Magistrate Judge Goldfrank has been an adjunct professor at Vermont Law
School and the American University College of Law, where she taught professional
responsibility.
