Matthew Kellegrew

ABOUT MATTHEW

Matthew Kellegrew is a Deputy Public Defender in beautiful Nevada County, California. He represents qualifying people through all stages of the criminal process from arraignment to trial. He is very enthusiastic about it.

Prior to entering public defense, he was in private practice in Los Angeles, California. He specialized in client-focused, politically aware unlawful detainer, criminal defense, public policy advocacy and capacity building trainings meant to empower local activists in their work.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Matthew attended the Evergreen State College in Olympia Washington where he double majored in poetics and political economics. While in college, Matthew was active with Olympia Port Militarization Resistance (OlyPMR) protesting against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After graduating, Matthew became a live-in staff member at the Catholic Worker-run Bread And Roses house. There, he was the services director of the Bread and Roses Advocacy Center, a drop-in resource providing emergency services to over 200 people a week. 2007, he helped found the Poor People’s Union that launched Camp Quixote, a resident-operated shelter alternative.

In law school Matthew was elected president of the Golden Gate University Student Chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild (NLG) as well as becoming Law School Vice President of the Bay Area Chapter of the NLG. He was an active legal observer during the Occupy Oakland demonstrations and now trains others to legal observe as well.

Mathew formerly interned at Justice Now, a prison abolitionist policy center providing direct legal services to people in California’s women’s prisons. There, he helped uncover a systematic program of illegal sterilizations of poor women of color that took place between 2008 and 2010. He worked with an investigative journalist from the Center for Investigative Reporting to break the story in 2013. The work of Justice Now resulted in the passage of SB 1135, outlawing the practice of medically unnecessary sterilization procedures in California’s Women’s Prisons.

He also interned with the San Francisco Public Defenders Office where he litigated pretrial matters in misdemeanor and felony cases as well as with John Viola and Rachel Lederman where he worked on political criminal defense cases and class action civil lawsuits against the Oakland police respectively.

After law school, Matthew was selected to become the Legal Fellow for the Bill Of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC). During his time with BORDC he traveled across the country lecturing about civil liberties abuses by the NSA, the potential dangers inherent in police use of drone technology and the extent of racial profiling bias in policing. He built and led the coalition that passed Senate Bill 828, known as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which placed restrictions on the extent to which local police departments could lawfully coordinate with federal surveillance programs run by the NSA and FBI.

He is the cofounder of Red Light Legal, an organization providing direct legal services, policy advocacy and legal representation to people in the sex industry. He is a former volunteer with Spokeland, Oakland’s own DIY bicycle resource center. Matthew lives in Nevada County with his cat and records.