Hon. Errol R. Arthur is a Magistrate Judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (“DC Superior Court”). Since his appointment in 2010, he has served in the Criminal Division, Domestic Violence Division, and Family Court. He is currently the Presiding Magistrate Judge and serves on the Chief Judge’s Judicial Leadership Team. Judge Arthur has presided over numerous bench trials in neglect and abuse cases, as well as arraignments and detention hearings in both juvenile and adult cases. Judge Arthur has also served on numerous court committees, a visiting faculty member of Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop, and Chair of the Washington Bar Association’s Judicial Council.

Before his appointment to the DC Superior Court, Judge Arthur joined the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) as a staff attorney in 1999, and he opened his own law practice in 2002. While at PDS and in private practice, he represented individuals in the DC Superior Court, Maryland’s Circuit and District Courts, the United States Parole Commission, and the District of Columbia Department Youth Rehabilitation Services. In 2008, Judge Arthur was appointed as Chairman of the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics, and he served as an adjunct professor and supervising attorney with the Howard University School of Law’s Criminal Justice Clinic.

A native Washingtonian, Judge Arthur graduated from St. John’s College High School in 1990, and he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Maryland in 1994. He received his law degree from the Howard University School of Law in 1998. Following law school, Judge Arthur clerked for the Honorable Mary A. Gooden Terrell on the DC Superior Court.