The District’s Public Defender Service has selected a veteran D.C. defense attorney and former member of the office as its new director, the office said Tuesday.

       Heather Pinckney, 45, succeeds Avis E. Buchanan, who announced last fall that she would be retiring as director after 18 years.

       Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight

       Pinckney, who for eight years was trial lawyer in the office, handled various felony cases, including homicides, sexual assaults, and gun and drug possession offenses. In 2008, Pinckney left the office and started her own firm, Pinckney & Harden, where she represented defendants in both D.C. Superior Court and U.S. District Court. In assuming her new role, Pinckney will also step down as executive director of the national Black Public Defender Association, a position to which she was recently named.

       Pinckney takes over the District’s largest federally funded office of defense attorneys at a challenging time for the litigators. Criminal cases in D.C. Superior Court have increased due to an uptick in violent crime in the city. At the same time, hundreds of cases have been put on hold or drastically slowed for two years because of the pandemic.

       In addition to Buchanan, Pinckney also follows former Public Defender Service directors including former Anita Hill adviser and Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. and American University Washington law professor and author Angela J. Davis.