When trustee Gerald Lee, CAS/BA ’73, WCL/JD ’76, asked his high school guidance counselor for a letter of recommendation to apply to AU in the late 1960s, she peered dubiously over her glasses and declared, “You are not college material.”   

“Miss Avery really was right,” Lee told American in 2018. “I was not college material—I was law school material.”  

Lee, winner of AU’s 2024 Neil Kerwin Alumni Achievement Award, has often joked that kids from the Southeast Washington neighborhood where he grew up were more likely to appear before the bench than to serve on it. But serve he did for 25 years—first as a trial judge in the 19th Judicial Circuit in Fairfax, Virginia, and later as the first Black appointee to the US District Court in Alexandria for the Eastern District of Virginia.

By the time he retired in 2017, Lee had presided over the cases of “a too-talkative spy, a wannabe presidential assassin, and a Washington football team,” the Washington Post wrote, and cemented his legacy as a tireless advocate for diversity and inclusion. 

Lee is among more than 130 legal Eagles from 30 states and the District, the US Virgin Islands, Brazil, and Uganda featured in the Washington College of Law’s Alumni Judges’ Gallery, unveiled outside of the Pence Law Library on February 2.  

Lee said it was an honor “to return to WCL, the place where we took our first baby steps of learning how to read a case, identify the issues, and apply the law. We never dreamed that one day we would return to our law school with our families to have our photo in a place of honor in a judges’ gallery.”

The gallery was funded by a gift from former WCL dean Roger Fairfax Jr. and his wife, Lisa Fairfax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School. 

“The gallery is not just a celebration of past achievements, but also a powerful motivation for the aspiring legal minds of tomorrow,” said Roger Fairfax, who stepped down in Juneafter three years as dean. “It represents the endless possibilities that lie within the grasp of those willing to put in the effort and dedication needed to excel in the legal arena.”