Lauren Wetzler

Senior Legal Advisor

Lauren Wetzler is a Senior Legal Advisor at Democracy Forward.

Prior to joining Democracy Forward, Lauren served as a Deputy Director in the Federal Programs Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division, where she supervised litigation implicating national security and foreign relations. For nearly nineteen years before joining the Federal Programs Branch, Lauren served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. In her last thirteen years there, she was the Chief of the Civil Division, the senior management official responsible for all civil litigation involving the federal government across the district. In this role, Lauren supervised and litigated a broad array of civil cases, including cases brought under the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, Bivens, the Federal Tort Claims Act, FOIA, immigration laws, civil rights statutes, and other laws.

Lauren clerked for the Honorable Barrington D. Parker, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. from Harvard University.