Judith Miller
Ms. Judith A. Miller has held numerous leadership positions in both the government and the private sector. Most recently, she served as Director, Senior Vice President, and General Counsel and Secretary for Bechtel Group, Inc., a global engineering, construction, and project management firm based in San Francisco.
A graduate of Yale Law School, Ms. Miller earned her bachelor’s degree at Beloit College with high honors. After completing her law degree in 1975, she clerked for Judge Harold Leventhal of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then was the first woman to clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart. She then joined the Department of Defense, working as assistant to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense, and as assistant for intergovernmental relations. In 1979 she joined the law firm of Williams Connolly LLP as an associate and became partner six years later.
In 1994 Ms. Miller returned to the Department of Defense as the organization’s General Counsel, a position she held until 1999. As chief legal officer for the more than 6,000 lawyers at the Department of Defense, she was responsible for advising the Secretary and the senior leadership team on a broad spectrum of legal and policy issues.
Prior to joining the Bechtel Group in 2006, Ms. Miller resumed her position as partner at Williams & Connolly LLP. Her practice involved civil litigation, business-related criminal defense litigation, officer counseling, and internal investigations.
Ms. Miller was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service and the Department of the Army Decoration for Distinguished Public Service. She later received the Bronze Palm for Meritorious Civilian Service. The National Association of Attorneys General awarded her the Volunteer Recognition Award for assistance to the states in preparation for arguments before the Supreme Court. Ms. Miller was recognized by the National Law Journal as one of the “50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America.” In 2006 she was named Woman Lawyer of the Year by the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
At Yale she has served twice as cochair of the Law School Reunion Gift Committee for the Class of 1975 reunion. She has also served for many years as a career mentor through the Yale Club of Washington, D.C.
Ms. Miller is a past chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of Litigation and formerly cochaired its Military Pro Bono project. She is a former member of the Defense Science Board, the Council of the American Law Institute, the Board of the Atlantic Council of the United States, and is a former trustee of the World Affairs Council of Northern California. She has also served on the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security; the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age; the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Science, Technology, and Law; and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Security and Prosperity. She is a trustee of Beloit College and serves on its Executive Committee and was a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Ethics 20/20.