Prof. John Douglass is Professor of Law at the University of Richmond, where he served as Dean of the Law School from 2007-2011. He teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, Criminal Procedure, litigation skills and trial advocacy. His principal academic publications have focused on prosecution, the criminal trial process and the Confrontation Clause. Before joining the Richmond Law faculty in 1996, he practiced law for 15 years. He served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Baltimore from 1983-86 and was Chief of the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney’s Office in Richmond from 1992 to 1996. He also served on the staff of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh in the Iran-Contra investigation.

As a partner in a Richmond law firm, he specialized in commercial litigation, insurance defense, construction litigation and white collar criminal defense. He has been a faculty member of the Virginia State Bar’s Course in Professionalism, an instructor in trial advocacy and other litigation skills for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, and a frequent lecturer at continuing legal education programs. He serves on the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission and on the Ethics Committee for Virginia Commonwealth University Hospitals and is former Chair of the Richmond City Charter Review Commission. From 2011-13 he chaired the ABA’s Virginia Assessment Team on the Death Penalty.

Prof. Douglass serves as a mediator of commercial disputes through the McCammon Group in Richmond. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.