Amie Ely is director of the National Attorneys General Training and Research Institute’s (NAGTRI) Center for Ethics and Public Integrity. She is staff liaison for the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Law Enforcement and Prosecutorial Relations Working Group.

Amie received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College, where she majored in psychology, biology, and neuroscience, and competed in the heptathlon as a member of Oberlin’s track and field team.

Amie’s law degree is from Cornell Law School, where she was elected as commencement speaker. Her Note, Prosecutorial Discretion as an Ethical Necessity: The Ashcroft Memorandum’s Curtailment of the Prosecutor’s Duty to Seek Justice, 90 Cornell L. Rev. 237 (2004), was the recipient of the Herbert R. Reif Prize.

After law school, Amie clerked for the Honorable Stephen C. Robinson in the Southern District of New York, and for the Honorable Richard C. Wesley on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Following her clerkships, Amie joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. During her nearly seven years at that Office, Amie prosecuted hundreds of defendants, was lead or co-counsel in more than ten trials, and represented the Government in over a dozen appeals to the Second Circuit. For much of that time, Amie was a member of the Violent Crimes Unit, where she prosecuted cold-case murders, along with racketeering, drug trafficking, money laundering, and firearms offenses. She also participated in panels that provided information to state parolees about both reentry assistance and the potential federal criminal consequences if they possessed firearms.

Amie is a member of the New York State Bar. She has been admitted to practice before the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

Amie was born and raised on a working farm in Wyoming, went to high school in West Virginia, and previously served on the Board of Trustees at Oberlin College. She has a terrible sense of direction, and is very thankful to be living in the era of the smartphone.