Ayesha Khan

Senior Legal Advisor

Ayesha N. Khan is a Senior Legal Advisor at Democracy Forward.

was the longtime Legal Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, where she built and directed a national trial and appellate litigation program to advance secular government, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ interests, and anti-discrimination principles.
She later served as a Deputy Chief in the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she supervised attorneys in civil appeals involving
discrimination in employment, housing, education, healthcare, correctional facilities, and public accommodations. She also worked with the Solicitor General’s Office on U.S.
Supreme Court cases raising civil rights issues and provided legal counsel to leadership and other DOJ divisions regarding civil rights protections.
For the past several years, she has been a Partner with the Potomac Law Group, PLLC, where she represents commercial, nonprofit, and individual clients in state and federal appellate cases spanning the firm’s practice areas. In addition, she mentors junior attorneys, provides strategic advice on litigation, and oversees cases for civil rights organizations throughout the country. In the course of her career, she has represented a party or an amicus curiae in approximately three dozen Supreme Court cases, over a hundred federal and state appellate matters, and scores of trial-level cases.

She is admitted to practice in D.C. and Maryland, every federal circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She received her JD from the University of California at Berkeley and her BA from the University of Michigan.