NATIONAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE COLLEGE FACULTY

As a former federal defender, Yasmin Cader has tried more than thirty criminal cases to resolution before juries and judges in state and federal courts in Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C. At the Offices of the Federal Public Defender in the Southern District of New York and Los Angeles, Yasmin represented witnesses and individuals facing a variety of federal criminal charges, including complex white-collar criminal and regulatory matters. Yasmin also served as the Chief of Training in Los Angeles, a position in which she developed and executed substantive legal and trial skills training programs for attorneys in Los Angeles and across the country. While representing individuals in Washington D.C. with the Public Defender Service, she defended juveniles and adults facing the most serious felony charges in Superior Court.
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Yasmin is also an experienced civil litigator. She began her career as an Honors Program Trial Lawyer with the Employment Litigation Section of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she litigated individual and class-action claims of sexual and racial harassment and discrimination. Prior to that, she served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith of the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
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In private practice, Yasmin continues to teach trial skills to practicing lawyers and law students alike. She is a member of the faculty at Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop and the National Criminal Defense College. She has served as a guest lecturer at local and national bar associations across the country, as well as at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, UCLA School of Law and Loyola Law School. She currently serves on the Yale Law School Executive Committee and is also on the board of a national non-profit dedicated to effective messaging for social justice issues.

John C. Ellis, Jr. is a National Coordinating Discovery Attorney for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Defender Services Office. In this capacity, he provides litigation support and e-discovery assistance on complex criminal cases to defense teams around the country. Before entering private practice, Mr. Ellis spent 13 years as a trial attorney and supervisory attorney with Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. He also serves as a digital forensic consultant and expert.

Callie Glanton Steele has devoted her career to the defense of indigent federal criminal clients at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles for the past 28 years. She has been the Senior Litigator from September of 2015 to the present, primarily handling complex cases. Also, she was a Supervising Deputy Federal Public Defender (2002 to September of 2015) and a Deputy Federal Public Defender in the trial unit (1992 to 2002). In 2000 and 2001, she was on a temporary duty assignment in Washington, D.C., where she was Special Counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission (November of 2000 to May of 2001), and a Visiting Defender at Defender Services Division with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (May to November of 2001), working in the Legal and Policy Division.

She graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1991, and served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Terry J. Hatter, Jr., United States District Judge in the fall of 1990.

Ms. Williams has worked in the Office of the Federal Defender for the District of Arizona since 1994. Prior to her appointment as FPD in 2013, she had served as first assistant federal public defender since 2006. She led the Tucson Criminal Defense Unit and assisted in supervision of staff in district offices in Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Yuma, and an out-of-district office in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ms. Williams also helped manage the district’s Capital Habeas Unit. The Office of the Federal Defender for the Eastern District of California, which opened 1,966 new cases in fiscal year 2016, is headquartered in Sacramento and maintains a fully-staffed branch office in Fresno.

Ms. Williams began her career in public service in 1988 as an assistant public defender for Pima County Office of the Public Defender in Tucson, Arizona, where she handled felony cases including death penalty homicides, drugs, sex crimes, and child abuse. Prior to that, she worked as an associate attorney in San Diego, California, from 1986 to 1988. A Tucson native, Ms. Williams received her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Pittsburgh State University in 1982 and her J.D. from the University of San Diego Law School in 1985.”