Kristy Parker is Counsel at Protect Democracy. She leads litigation to secure accountability for abuses of executive power and interference with government functions, and leads advocacy to reform the Department of Justice and protect its independence from politicization. Before joining Protect Democracy, she spent 15 years as a federal prosecutor at the Justice Department, specializing in police excessive force and hate crimes cases as a Deputy Chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section. She previously spent four years as a Trial Attorney on the Civil Division’s Constitutional Tort Staff, where she litigated issues involving executive branch immunities, and which she joined through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and a D.Phil in Modern History from the University of Oxford, and clerked for Judge Stephanie K. Seymour on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.