Andre M. Davis

Davis received his B.A. in American History from the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D., with honors, from the University of Maryland School of Law, where he won Best Advocate in the Myerowitz Moot Court Competition, and chaired the Honor Board. The faculty awarded him the prestigious Roger Howell Award at graduation.

Upon graduation from law school, he completed one-year clerkships with Judge Frank A. Kaufman on the U.S. District Court in Baltimore and Judge Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr., on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Thereafter, he served as an appellate attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington and as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Maryland, where he handled both civil and criminal cases. He later was in private practice and, from 1984 until 1987, he was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law, where he continued to teach as an adjunct faculty member until 2014. He has served for many years as a member of the law school’s Board of Visitors and previously on its Alumni Association Board, including a term as president. Since 1994, he has been a member of the volunteer faculty of the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada, where he also served as a member of, and for a one-year term, chair of the faculty council. He is a frequent lecturer on aspects of civil and criminal practice for legal and judicial education and training entities.

Upon his appointment by the governor, Davis served as an Associate Judge on the District Court of Maryland for Baltimore City from 1987 through 1990 and then as an Associate Judge on the Circuit Court for Baltimore City from 1990 until his appointment in August 1995 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland by President Bill Clinton. He was nominated in March 2009 by President Obama to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the Senate confirmed his nomination in November 2009. After assuming senior status in February 2014, he continued to carry a full load of cases on the Fourth Circuit while also sitting as a visiting circuit judge with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

He is a past president of the Executive Committee of the Maryland Judicial Conference and a former member of the board of directors of the Judicial Institute of Maryland. He was, for many years, a member of the Section Council on Correctional Reform of the Maryland State Bar Association. He has served as the Chair of the Conference of Federal Trial Judges (Judicial Division of the ABA) and for four years as a member of the Executive Committee of the ABA’s Conference of Appellate Judges.  He was for four years Chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on Diversity in the Judiciary. He has served in numerous civic and professional leadership roles, including a two-year term as President of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Central Maryland and a two-year term as President of the Legal Aid Bureau, Inc. For more than twenty years he has been a member of the advisory board of the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. He served for more than ten years as chair and member of the board of Community Law and Action, Inc., a law-related high school leadership development program, and as chair of the board of the Baltimore Urban Debate League, Inc.

During his 30-year judicial career through 2017, Davis was active in numerous national and international judicial and legal education and Rule of Law training programs through his membership on the Judicial Conference of the United States/Committee on International Judicial Relations; the Einstein Institute for Science, Health and the Courts; the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience; and the Federal Judicial Center.  He has participated and presented in many programs, trainings, and seminars, including, among others, workshops and seminars in Russia, Armenia, Poland, Ukraine, Kosovo, Swaziland, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania, Mali, and Egypt.  His keen interest in how advances in technology improve the work of courts prompted his six-year tenure on the Committee on Information Technology of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Davis has been the recipient of numerous awards and commendations, including the Benjamin Cardin Public Service Award and the Mary Ellen Barbera Judicial Excellence Award, each granted by the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, the 2017 John Marshall Award, presented by the American Bar Association, and the Joseph Curran Public Service Award, given by the Maryland Bar Foundation.

In September 2017, at the invitation of a newly elected mayor of his beloved hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, Davis retired fully from service as a judge to join Mayor Pugh’s administration as City Solicitor, Head of the Law Department, and one of five voting members of the City Spending Authority, the Board of Estimates. As Solicitor, Davis managed a department of approximately 110, including 70 lawyers who represent the City in all civil legal matters, including but not limited to affirmative and defensive litigation, tax matters, real estate, and contracts of all kinds.  In his role as counsel to the Baltimore City Police Department, he was at the forefront of the City’s implementation of the federal court consent decree jointly agreed to by the U.S. Department of Justice and Baltimore City following the widespread unrest and consequent Justice Department investigation of police practices in April 2015.

He retired as City Solicitor in February 2020. In retirement, he has continued his efforts to advance the cause equal justice and community uplift through service, among other commitments, as Vice Chair of the Attorney General’s Access to Justice Task Force, a Trustee of the Walters Art Museum, membership on the advisory board of the Center for Law, Behavior, and the Brain headquartered at Harvard Medical School, membership on the board of the Juvenile Law Center, headquartered in Philadelphia, and membership on the advisory board of Roca-Baltimore, a nationally renowned community violence prevention program. He keeps an office at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where he has been named a Distinguished Jurist in Residence.