Olinda Moyd

Olinda Moyd is a social justice champion who has dedicated her legal career to disrupting the machinery of mass incarceration through her prisoner’s rights, parole, post-conviction, second look and reentry work. Her fight to free individuals from the carceral state reverberates through her journey as an attorney, professor, consultant, and community activist. From May 2022 until June 2025, Olinda was the Director of the Decarceration and Re-Entry Clinic at the American University Washington College of Law. She supervised student attorneys as they represented juvenile lifers and advocated for their release. She was previously an Adjunct Professor and Supervising Attorney for the Re-Entry Clinic at the Howard University, School of Law. Prior to joining the Howard Law faculty, Professor Moyd was Chief Attorney of the Parole Division at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where she was employed for three decades. Olinda has a passion for expanding legal education through clinical pedagogy, especially focused on prisoner’s rights, parole and reentry challenges.