The Legal Aid Society has announced the hiring of Corey Stoughton as Attorney-in-Charge of the Criminal Defense Practice Special Litigation Unit. Corey is well known for her tenure at the New York Civil Liberties Union where she worked for over a decade on a broad range of constitutional and human rights issues including Hurrell-Harring, et al. v. State of New York, which set funding and caseload standards for public defender organizations in New York State.

Corey comes to LAS from Liberty, the leading domestic human rights organization in the United Kingdom. As Liberty’s Director of Advocacy and its Interim Acting Director, Corey managed legal, policy and campaign work, according to the New York Law Journal.

Previous to Liberty, she served as senior counsel to the Vanita Gupta, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice under President Obama.

She has also worked as an adjunct clinical professor of law at New York University School of Law. Corey graduated from Harvard Law School and the University of Michigan.

“It is an honor to join The Legal Aid Society at this critical moment in the struggle to end mass incarceration and confront the racism at the root of our criminal justice system,” said Stoughton. “I look forward to working alongside my Legal Aid colleagues and our allies across New York to develop strategic litigation and policy solutions to the problems public defenders confront every day.”