Vikram Swaruup, Esq., serves as Senior Counsel to the Attorney General for the District of Columbia. He advises the Attorney General and the Chief Deputy Attorney General on a range of legal matters, including complex issues of District law such as separation of powers and the legal sufficiency of Council-enacted legislation. Before joining the Attorney General’s senior leadership team, Mr. Swaruup established the office’s civil rights practice as its first attorney charged with investigating and prosecuting cases under the D.C. Human Rights Act.

Mr. Swaruup previously served as an appellate attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. There, he briefed and argued civil rights cases in federal courts of appeals across the country. In a precedent-setting appeal, Mr. Swaruup successfully defended the constitutionality of the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. Mr. Swaruup also represented the United States in cases protecting voting rights under the National Voter Registration Act, desegregating schools after more than 50 years of litigation, and holding police accountable for misconduct. Before joining DOJ, Mr. Swaruup worked in private practice as an associate at Susman Godfrey LLP, where he litigated complex commercial cases.

Mr. Swaruup graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Order of the Coif). Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Mary M. Schroeder on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Lucy H. Koh on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.