Donald P. Salzman

Mr. Salzman supervises lawyers on pro bono projects and leads teams of lawyers on cases on which he is significantly involved. He has litigated numerous post-conviction and innocence cases and has represented both federal and state death row inmates throughout his career. Mr. Salzman led Skadden’s successful firmwide project to assist hundreds of non-violent federal inmates seeking clemency from the president through the Clemency Project 2014. He has served on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project since 2002 and is its former board president and treasurer. He also became a member of the board of Law Students in Court in 2018. He was a legal director of the Innocence Commission for Virginia in 2004 and 2005. In 2014, Mr. Salzman received the Servant of Justice award from the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia. In 2018, Mr. Salzman received the Distinguished Alumni Award from DC Law Students in Court.

Prior to joining Skadden, Mr. Salzman was an assistant public defender in Maryland from 1988 to 2002, where, in addition to being a trial lawyer and supervisor, he started a novel pro bono representation partnership project between the Office of the Public Defender and prominent Washington, D.C. law firms, including Skadden. The project provides training and consultation to firm lawyers who agree to represent felony and misdemeanor clients on a pro bono basis in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland. Mr. Salzman also was a visiting professor in the Georgetown Law School Criminal Justice Clinic between 1995 and 1996 and has been a guest lecturer at a number of criminal law and procedure classes at the George Washington University Law School, where he is an alumnus.