Jennifer Mellon joined the FDO as an Assistant Federal Defender in 2014, and since March of 2018 has been working as an Investigator in the New Haven office. During law school she was the Special Projects Editor for the Duke Law Journal and received pro bono awards from both Duke and the North Carolina State Bar Association. Jennifer interned with the San Francisco Public Defender, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, North Carolina, and the Public Defender for District 15B in Carrboro, North Carolina. Following law school, she was a fellow at the Fair Trial Initiative where she worked with trial counsel representing defendants in death penalty cases. From 2009-2014, she worked as a public defender in state court in New Haven. From 2012-2014, she was a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School in the Criminal Justice Clinic. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, and is fluent in Spanish