BU Law to Honor Deborah S. Mayer (’97) of the Senate’s Committee on Ethics with DC Public Service Award
Alumna to be recognized for commitment to justice and ethical conduct in the public sector
Boston University School of Law will present its DC Public Service Award to Deborah S. Mayer (’97), chief counsel and staff director of the Select Committee on Ethics in the US Senate, at an alumni reception April 30 at Covington & Burling in Washington, DC. The annual award recognizes a BU Law graduate in the DC area who has demonstrated exemplary work in the public sector.
“As a public servant for nearly two decades, Deborah Mayer has exhibited an exceptional commitment to justice and ethics,” says Dean Maureen A. O’Rourke. “We commend her for her service to our country and are proud to call her an alumna of BU Law.”
As chief counsel and staff director of the Select Committee on Ethics, Mayer serves as a non-partisan, professional staff leader, selected jointly by both sides of the only bipartisan committee in the Senate. She advises members of the committee and oversees the nonpartisan staff in the ethics advice and education function, as well as the internal investigation and enforcement of ethics rules, laws, and standards of conduct.
Immediately prior to her work in the Senate, Mayer served as the director of investigations for the House Ethics Committee, overseeing the committee’s investigations into members of Congress or their staff from 2011 through 2014.
Before serving in the legislative branch, Mayer was a prosecutor with the US Department of Justice for nine years. She began her career with the Department of Justice in 2002, as an assistant US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, spending most of her five-and-a-half years in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, where she investigated and prosecuted members and associates of La Cosa Nostra. Her notable cases included prosecuting Alphonse Persico, boss of the Colombo crime family and son of Carmine “the Snake” Persico, for murder in aid of racketeering and witness tampering. She also served as the lead prosecutor in one of the only trials in the country involving the smuggling of antiquities looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003.
In 2008, Mayer joined the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, where she investigated and prosecuted corruption at all levels of government throughout the United States.
Since 1998, Mayer has served as a judge advocate in the US Navy, first on active duty and then in the reserves. Throughout her 16 years in the Navy JAG Corps, she has served in a variety of litigation and operational assignments, including as a trial and appellate prosecutor and a staff judge advocate. Mayer currently holds the rank of commander and serves as a military judge presiding over courts-martial in the US Navy and US Marine Corps.
In addition to her work as an attorney, Mayer has served as a teacher in a variety of environments, including training prosecutors at the Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center, providing training for law enforcement agents at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and teaching as an adjunct assistant professor of clinical law at Brooklyn Law School.
Mayer received her JD from Boston University School of Law in 1997, and her BA from Wesleyan University in 1991.