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Judge Andrea Leahy to Receive the 2025 American Inns of Court Fourth Circuit Professionalism Award
ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Andrea Leahy has been selected to receive the prestigious 2025 American Inns of Court Professionalism Award for the Fourth Circuit. Leahy is an associate judge at large in the Appellate Court of Maryland.
Judge Andrea Leahy, selected to receive prestigious 2025 American @InnsofCourt Professionalism Award for the 4th Circuit. #InnsofCourt
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Leahy was appointed to the Appellate Court in 2014. She is chair-elect of the Judicial Ethics Committee and a member of the Judicial Transparency and Access Workgroup. She was a member of the Legislative Committee, the Specialty Courts and Dockets Committee, and subcommittees focused on mental health, alcoholism and addictions, and behavioral health.
One of Leahy's most recent contributions to Maryland's legal community is her work to establish the Cole-Davidson American Inn of Court, in Annapolis. Leahy chaired the organizing committee for the Inn, which was established in 2022. '[W]ithout her, there would be no appellate Inn in Maryland,' writes Senior Judge (Ret.) Ima S. Raker of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who nominated her former law school student for the award. From 2018 to 2019, Leahy served as president of the Hon. James McGill American Inn of Court in Columbia, Maryland. She was a member of the J. Dudley Digges American Inn of Court in Baltimore from 2002 to 2014.
Leahy began her career as an assistant county attorney in Prince George's County Office of Law, where she met County Executive Parris Glendening. When Glendening was elected Maryland's governor in 1995, he hired Leahy as his chief legal counsel. After five years of advising the governor, Leahy became an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland. Before becoming a judge, she was of counsel in the Business Litigation Division of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP from 2001 to 2006 and as a managing member of Leahy & DeSmet LLC from 2006 to 2014.
Leahy is active within the legal community. A member of the Maryland State Bar Association, she is a fellow of the Maryland Bar Association and the American Bar Foundation. Leahy also chaired a project that brought judges, lawyers, and academics together to uncover and publish the history of women in Maryland law. The project culminated in the book Finding Justice: A History of Women Lawyers in Maryland Since 1642.
Leahy earned undergraduate degrees in music and politics from The Catholic University of America in 1983, then spent a summer as a guest student at Mozarteum University's music academy in Salzburg, Austria. Leahy earned her law degree in 1987 from American University's Washington College of Law.
The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, inspires the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring. The organization's membership includes more than 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in more than 350 chapters nationwide. More information is available at
