Gabriel Diaz is Counsel at Relman Colfax. Gabe joined the firm in 2020. His civil rights litigation practice includes cases involving discrimination in policing, housing, and employment. Gabe’s work focuses on issues of racial and economic justice, with a particular interest in the intersection of criminal justice and civil rights litigation.
Prior to joining the firm, Gabe spent 9 years as an attorney in the trial and appellate divisions at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where he represented hundreds of indigent clients at trial, on appeal, and in post-conviction proceedings; supervised and trained new lawyers and law students; and was a member of the organization’s nationally-recognized Forensic Practice Group. Gabe also worked as Senior Legal Counsel for The Justice Collaborative, where he led criminal justice reform efforts across the country that included working with progressive prosecutors to design and implement policies to reduce incarceration rates; drafting model legislation and related background materials for implementation in jurisdictions across the country; and developing strategies for issue-based media advocacy work. In 2017, Gabe served as an International Fellow at the International Legal Foundation’s office in Tunisia, where he supervised and trained the office’s public defenders and worked with the attorneys and local government officials to improve protection of defendants’ rights within the legal system.
Gabe was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar at New York University School of Law, where he also received the Black, Latino, Asian Pacific American Law Alumni Association Public Service Graduation Prize.
This lawsuit, brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and state common law, alleges the excessive use of force and suppression of free speech by the District of Columbia in its mass arrest of peaceful “Black Lives Matter” protesters on Swann Street on June 1, 2020.
J.D., New York University School of Law
B.A., Columbia University, cum laude
