BIOGRAPHY OF ELIZABETH SARAH (“SALLY”) GERE
Sally Gere grew up in Syracuse, N.Y. with her parents and three younger sisters in
an era that began to open new professional opportunities for women. For Sally ,that
led to the law. After graduating from Denison University and George Washington
University Law School, Sally was a law clerk to Judge June L. Green of the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia-the fourth woman in the country to be
appointed to the federal trial bench. With Judge Green as her role model, Sally
learned how to be a successful trial lawyer.
After her clerkship, Sally served in the Criminal and Civil Divisions of the U.S.
Department of Justice and was Chief of the Civil Division in the U.S. Attorney’s
Office in the Southern District of Ohio. She then returned to the District of
Columbia, where she spent more than two decades as a partner and general counsel
at Ross, Dixon & Bell, now Troutman Pepper. h 2A11, Sally returned to public
service as a Deputy Attorney General in the Office of the Attorney General for the
District of Columbia, where she worked until her retirement in 2018.
Over her career, Sally litigated a wide variety of civil and criminal cases in trial and
appellate courts in the District of Columbia and across the country. Many of them
made headlines in the [Mashington Post and the New York Times, and several reached
the Supreme Court of the United States.
Sally taught at and, for a year, led the Justice Department’s Advocacy Institute
program for civil litigation. Sally also was an adjunct professor at Georgetown
University Law Center for over 20 years, where she was honored with an
Outstanding Adj unct Professor award.
Sally’s other contributions to the profession include having served as a bar examiner
with the D.C. Court of Appeals Committee on Admissions and as a member of one
of that Court’s Board on Professional Responsibility Hearing Committees. She was
Chair of the D.C. District Court’s Committee on Pro Se Litigation, and a member of
its Local Rules Committee, its Lawyer Counseling Panel, and its Merit Selection
Panel for magistrate judges. Sally has been a member of the D.C. Circuit Judicial
Conference for decades and has received numerous professional awards. She was
one of the first members of the Potter Stewart Inn of Court in Cincinnati, Ohio, and
was a member of the Charles Fahy Inn of Court, the first Inn of Court in the District
of Columbia.