Attorney General: Janet W. Reno

Janet Wood Reno was born on July 21, 1938, in Miami, Florida. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Cornell University in 1960 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1963. From 1963 to 1967, she was an associate at the Miami law firm Brigham & Brigham. In 1967, Reno became a partner at Lewis & Reno and remained there until 1971, when she was named staff director of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives. In 1973, she was consultant to the Florida State Senate Criminal Justice Committee for Revision of Florida’s Criminal Code, then served as assistant to the state attorney in Miami from 1973 to 1976. Reno rejoined the private sector in 1976 as a partner in the Miami law firm Steel, Hector & Davis, remaining in that position until 1978 when the governor of Florida appointed her to serve as the state attorney in Miami for the 11th Judicial Circuit, making her the first woman to hold that position. She was subsequently reelected five times. 

On March 12, 1993, Reno was appointed the 78th Attorney General of the United States by President William J. Clinton. The first woman to hold the Department’s most senior post, she served until January 2001 and thus became the longest serving Attorney General of the twentieth century. In 2002, Reno unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in Florida. In addition to speaking frequently on criminal justice issues in the United States, she served on the board of directors of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization committed to exonerating wrongly convicted individuals through DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. Reno died on November 7, 2016, in Miami, Florida.