Kristin McGough

Before joining Winston & Strawn, Kristin was the Supervising Counsel for the Prisoners’ Rights team at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, a non-profit racial justice organization. There, she leveraged structural litigation with related public policy advocacy to enforce the civil rights and civil liberties of individuals incarcerated both locally and in the federal Bureau of Prisons. 

Prior to joining the Committee, Kristin spent nearly a decade running her own legal practice, focused almost exclusively on representing indigent criminal defendants in the District of Columbia as a Criminal Justice Act attorney. She has handled hundreds of cases at every offense level—from traffic violations to homicides—and tried nearly 20 cases before a jury.

Kristin began her legal career as a law clerk to the Civil Division and thereafter to the Honorable Joan Zeldon at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, assisting in the management of complex civil litigation calendars. She went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, in both the Sex Offense and Domestic Violence Section and the Appellate Division, before joining a small boutique law firm, where her practice focused on both civil and criminal litigation, including local and international white-collar criminal defense matters.