Elizabeth “Beth” A. Mellen, Esq., is an Assistant Deputy Attorney General in the Public Advocacy Division at the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, where she co-supervises a team of over 90 attorneys and staff handling civil enforcement litigation in antitrust, civil rights, consumer protection, elder justice, environmental, government fraud, housing, nonprofit, and workers’ rights matters.

Before joining the Office of the Attorney General, Ms. Mellen was a Supervising Attorney and Director of the Eviction Prevention Project at Legal Aid DC. As a legal services attorney for 17 years, she represented low-income tenants and tenant associations across all eight wards in affirmative and defensive claims on various housing issues, primarily appearing in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (Superior Court), the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and the District of Columbia Office of Administrative Hearings. Ms. Mellen also engaged in policy work on housing and civil access to justice issues with the Council for the District of Columbia and various District agencies. She served on the Superior Court Advisory Subcommittee on Landlord-Tenant Rules and the Landlord-Tenant Working Group. She is the recipient of the National Law Journal’s Rising Stars 40 Under 40 Award (2015), the National Housing Law Project’s Housing Justice Award (2016), and the D.C. Bar Foundation’s Jerrold Scoutt Prize (2020). Ms. Mellen is also a member of the D.C. Access to Justice Commission.

Ms. Mellen earned her Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College and Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Catherine C. Blake on the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, and she served as the Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr. Appellate Advocacy Fellow with the Public Justice Center.