Ralph F. Boyd is an American lawyer and public official who served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the United States Department of Justice. A graduate of Haverford College and Harvard Law School, he also worked as a federal prosecutor and held senior legal and leadership posts at Goodwin Procter, Alston & Bird, Freddie Mac, and several nonprofit organizations.
Background
Ralph F. Boyd was the son of the founder of the Schenectady chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in New York. Founded in 1909, the NAACP became one of the leading American organizations working for civil rights and legal equality through litigation and public advocacy.
Boyd's later public career centered on the enforcement of federal civil rights law, a field that his family's civic involvement in Schenectady helps place in context.
Education
Boyd received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Haverford College in 1979. Haverford was founded in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) to provide an education grounded in Quaker values for young men. It became fully coeducational in 1980, the year after Boyd graduated.
He then attended Harvard Law School, where he received a Juris Doctor in 1984. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is among the oldest law schools in the United States.
At Harvard he was an editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, a student-edited journal associated with the school's civil rights and civil liberties scholarship.
Career
After law school Boyd clerked for a district court judge. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1986 and later worked as a partner in a law firm.
From 1991 to 1997 he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. The U.S. Attorney's Office serves as the chief federal prosecuting office in a federal judicial district and represents the federal government in civil and criminal litigation.
Boyd then practiced as a partner in the litigation department of Goodwin Procter in Boston. The firm was founded in 1912 by Robert Eliot Goodwin and Joseph Osborne Procter Jr., who opened their practice at 84 State Street on July 1 that year. By the 1990s it had grown into the largest firm under one roof in the United States.
Boyd was nominated to lead the Civil Rights Division during the administration of President George W. Bush, and by 2003 he served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The division was established on December 9, 1957, by order of Attorney General William P. Rogers, following the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative John F. Tierney presented his nomination to a Senate committee.
In 2004 he became a senior partner at Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based law firm. In the same year he was general counsel of Freddie Mac, the federally chartered mortgage finance enterprise, and from 2005 to 2012 he served as its executive vice president for community relations.
He later served as president and chief executive officer of SOME, Inc. (So Others Might Eat), a Washington, D.C. nonprofit serving people experiencing homelessness and poverty. He was also chief executive of the American Red Cross, Massachusetts Region, a chapter of the organization that Congress chartered in 1905. In addition, he was a senior resident fellow for leadership and strategy at the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit land use research and education organization, and served as interim president and chief executive of Center City Public Charter Schools, Inc.
Earlier public service included membership on the Judicial Nominating Council of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1997 to 2001, when he served two Massachusetts governors on a panel that screened candidates for state superior and appellate courts. In 2000 he also served on a review panel that assisted in performance reviews of U.S. magistrate judges in the District of Massachusetts.
Politics
Ralph F. Boyd's documented political role was an appointed federal office rather than an elected one. He was nominated during the administration of President George W. Bush to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 created that post as a presidential appointment requiring Senate confirmation.
His public work in that office concerned the enforcement of federal civil rights statutes, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin. The division was established on December 9, 1957, and its authority expanded after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. During his tenure, the division's National Origin Working Group addressed the discriminatory backlash that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
At his nomination hearing, Senator Edward M. Kennedy described Boyd as an outstanding student at Harvard Law School and, as a federal prosecutor, a tough but fair prosecutor known in the U.S. Attorney's Office.
