DA promotes veteran prosecutor to No. 2 spot
Veteran prosecutor Dwain Woodley has been tapped as the new assistant district attorney, the first Black person to hold the No. 2 spot in that office.
Woodley has “demonstrated exceptional judgment and outstanding management skills,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a news release announcing the promotion.
Woodley helped develop and lead the Community Partnership Prosecutors program, created in 2019. According to the DA’s office, the program works with community groups and law enforcement to target issues that have a nexus to crime. Woodley grew up in Baltimore. He graduated from McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College) and earned his law degree at the University of Maryland.
In 1989, he joined the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps — a job that let him try his hand as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. His last job there was as a staff attorney with the National Security Agency.
After he left the Navy in 1995, Woodley worked as a deputy public defender in San Diego before making the jump to the District Attorney’s Office in 2001. He stepped into management in 2008.
In 2017, the District Attorney’s Office featured him in a video for Black History Month, and he noted the importance of diversity at every level in the criminal justice system. “People feel like they are getting a fair shot, even if you are on the other side of them,” he said.
In her statement, Stephan said Woodley “has been instrumental in further developing our office as one that reflects the diversity of the community we serve by striving to recruit and retain the most talented, diverse and inclusive workforce in order to improve our pursuit of a fair and equal justice for all.”
Woodley’s elevation to second in command follows the retirement last month of longtime prosecutor David Greenberg. The annual salary is about $245,000.