2026 Summer Public Defense Conference

As a Senior Attorney with the Georgia Innocence Project, Veronica O'Grady analyzes wrongful conviction claims and develops strategies to investigate and present them, often through litigation, while guiding case preparation and evidence review. Before joining Georgia Innocence Project in 2024, Veronica worked for the Georgia Public Defender Council for a collective 8 years as both a trial-level and appellate-level assistant public defender. In her time as an appellate attorney, she filed over 30 substantive briefs before the Georgia Supreme Court and Georgia Court of Appeals. As a trial attorney, she represented hundreds of clients charged with felonies ranging from simple drug possession to murder in Clayton County Superior Court. After graduating from the Ohio State University (2011) and the University of Georgia School of Law (2015), Veronica clerked for a Federal Magistrate Judge in Columbus, GA. When not passionately fighting against injustice in the criminal legal system, she spends her time with her husband, daughter, and their various pets.