Ellen Valentik Leonida is a partner at BraunHagey & Borden. Her practice focuses on leading a broad range of impact litigation in state and federal courts. She also heads the firm's white collar practice. Ellen has conducted over 80 jury trials in federal courts in the Northern District of California and California state courts. She served as the forensic staff attorney for the Northern District of California Federal Defender's Office, where she developed an annual DNA boot camp and offered training and guidance to criminal defense attorneys throughout the country on forensic issues. She has lectured nationally on topics including DNA, digital forensics, and trial skills.

Education

Leonida attended

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

, as an undergraduate majoring in American Studies. In 1993, she received a bachelor's degree with College Honors and Highest Honors in the major and was admitted to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

. She attended law school at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

Boalt Hall School of Law The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (commonly known as Berkeley Law or UC Berkeley School of Law) is the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It is one of 1 ...

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

. In law school she was director of the Homeless Outreach Project and a founding member of the Boalt Hall Chapter of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as well as a volunteer at the California Asylum Representation Clinic. Ms. Leonida received her JD in 1996. On December 3, 1996, she was admitted to California State Bar.

Early career

In 1997, Leonida joined the Contra Costa County Public Defender's Office. Prior to joining the office she interned at the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights and the Youth Law Center. From 2010 to 2021 she was assistant Federal Public Defender in the Northern District of California, where she served as the forensic staff attorney. In that capacity, she successfully challenged the government's ability to obtain cell cite location data without a search warrant.

Scott Dyleski

Her most famous client from her state public defender days is Scott Dyleski. In the fall of 2005, Dyleski, then 16, was accused of beating the wife, Pamela Vitale, of prominent criminal defense attorney

Daniel Horowitz Daniel Aaron Horowitz (born December 14, 1954) is an American defense attorney who has represented several high-profile clients including talk show host Michael Savage and is a frequent commentator in the media on criminal cases in the news. In ...

to death in their Lafayette, California home. She became his attorney after the Dyleski family fired their attorney, Thomas McKenna due to a conflict of interest. McKenna had defended the driver of a car that killed Dyleski's sister and another passenger in 2002. Dyleski was later convicted of the charges and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leonida, Ellen Living people California lawyers 1970 births People from Chișinău Soviet emigrants to the United States Criminal defense lawyers American women lawyers Public defenders UC Berkeley School of Law alumni University of California, Santa Cruz alumni 21st-century American women