Eugene A. Adams is presently the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel, having been appointed to the position by Mayor Bower in September 2020. Immediately prior to this appointment, he was the Chief Judge of the Office of Administrative Hearings for the District of Columbia, having been confirmed by the Council in the summer of 2015.
Prior to that time, he worked in the city’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG), where he held several management positions including that of Chief Deputy AG (Principal Deputy Corporation Counsel).
Mr. Adams joined the (then) Office of the Corporation Counsel in the late eighties as a staff attorney in the Civil Litigation Division. He was subsequently appointed as the Section Chief of the Housing Litigation Section in 1993 by the late Corporation Counsel John Payton and again worked as a Section Chief in another part of the Civil Litigation Division into the late nineties.
After a brief stint as a Special Counsel to the Corporation Counsel, he was appointed as the Deputy of the Civil Litigation Division, where he served in that capacity until he became the Acting Principal Deputy Corporation Counsel in the summer of 2002. He became the permanent Chief Deputy a year later and held that position for the remainder of the time that he worked in OAG.
He is a civil litigator by training and has acquired significant management experience along the way. He has handled numerous trials and evidentiary hearings for District of Columbia officials and employees in both federal and local courts, acquiring significant litigation skills and related experience in the process.
As OAG’s Chief Deputy for nearly 13 years, Mr. Adams advised 5 Corporation Counsels/Attorneys General on the city’s important legal matters and generally oversaw day-to-day operations, including personnel, budget, labor negotiations, and logistics. He also maintained a portfolio of legal matters, handled special assignments from the AGs, and provided institutional continuity to the office during his tenure.
Mr. Adams also worked as a Trial Attorney for the EEOC prior to his employment with the District of Columbia. He is a graduate of Western High School (now the Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts), Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut School of Law.