Deborah Harris is the Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes Section (ECS). She supervises an office of 36 attorneys responsible for the prosecution nationwide of environmental, wildlife, animal welfare, and worker safety crimes. Ms. Harris works extensively with a wide range of federal investigative agencies, including EPA, Coast Guard, OSHA, USDA, NOAA, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She chairs DOJ’s Environmental Crimes Policy Committee, and serves on the Advisory Board of INTERPOL’s Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Committee.

Prior to joining ECS, Ms. Harris was a criminal defense attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. She received a B.A. in English and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Following law school, she was a Prettyman Fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center Criminal Justice Clinic where she received her LL.M. in Trial Advocacy.