Peter C. Pfaffenroth, Esq., has served as an Assistant United States Attorney since 2012 and, since 2016, as Assistant Appellate Counsel in the Civil Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. He has supervised hundreds of the Office’s civil appeals. He has also briefed dozens of appeals on topics including constitutional law, civil rights, torts, contracts, and administrative law, and he regularly argues in the D.C. Circuit. He has tried multiple civil rights cases and handled all facets of pretrial litigation on a docket of more than 75 active trial court cases.

While previously an appellate and litigation associate with Sidley Austin, he argued multiple criminal defense cases en banc, as well as family law issues in the D.C. Court of Appeals. He has received numerous Department of Justice Special Achievement Awards and a U.S. Attorney’s Office Team Award and was honored while in private practice by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for his Supreme Court advocacy on behalf of criminal defendants.

Mr. Pfaffenroth holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, in German and politics from Princeton University. He earned his Juris Doctor, with distinction, at Stanford Law School, where he was an Executive Editor of the Stanford Law Review. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Judith W. Rogers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Honorable Ellen Segal Huvelle on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.