Profession Attorney Children Abby, Olivia | Spouse(s) Craig Kreiser Preceded by Thomas E. Moss Name Wendy Olson | |
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Alma mater Drake UniversityStanford Law School Education | ||
3 challenges to prosecuting hate crimes at the federal level
Wendy J. Olson (born 1964) is an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Idaho from 2010 to 2017. She was appointed in 2010 by President Barack Obama, replacing Thomas E. Moss. As one of 93 US Attorneys nationwide, she represents the United States in all civil and criminal cases within her district.
Olson was born in Pocatello, Idaho and attended Pocatello High School. For college, Olson attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in journalism in 1986. She served as an intern in the sports department of the Los Angeles Times before leaving to attend Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California. She graduated Stanford with a Juris Doctor in 1990, participating in internships with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, the Student Press Law Center, and the Media Access Project along the way.
For her first two years after law school, Olson served as a clerk for Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein on the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. For the next five years, from 1992 to 1997, she served as a trial attorney and later Deputy Director of the National Church Arson Task Force in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. From 1994-1997, she also served part-time as an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University Law School.
In 1997, Olson joined the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Idaho, rising to the rank of Senior Litigation Counsel at the time of her appointment in 2010.
In June 2016, she made national news when she said "The spread of false information or inflammatory or threatening statements about the perpetrators or the crime itself reduces public safety and may violate federal law". A few days later, she had to clarify what she meant "The [first] statement was not intended to and does not threaten to arrest or prosecute anyone for First Amendment protected speech … [but] certain threatening or harassing communications may violate federal law and will be investigated,” she insisted in her new Tuesday, June 28 statement in a case dealing with 3 refugee boys that allegedly raped a 5 year old girl.
After Olson resigned in 2017, she joined the law offices of Stoel Rives.
