Our Board

Harold Grigsby III is an attorney and advocate from Stockton, California whose personal dedication to criminal justice reform spans more than a decade.

As a juvenile, Harold had a brief encounter with the carceral system. What stayed with him wasn’t the experience itself, but the people around it: decision-makers who had never lived anything close to what he had, speaking a language that sounded clinical but carried life-altering consequences. Words like “diversion,” “supervision,” and “disposition.” Terms that sound soft but land hard. These words sounded like second chances but came loaded with conditions designed to entrap you. He made a vow then: to master that language, and use it in service of the people trapped inside a system that was designed to keep them there.

He has kept that vow in every community he has called home. From the communities of Stockton to Los Angeles, to the courtrooms of Massachusetts and the DMV, Harold has spent his career showing up where the stakes are highest. He also serves as Director of Legal and Compliance at CivicGovOS, a civic technology company working to modernize how local governments operate. Increasingly, Harold’s practice has expanded into sports law, with a focus on helping young athletes, particularly those from underserved communities, understand and leverage their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rights and build lasting equity from their athletic careers with the Athlete Equity Group.

Previously, Harold served as an associate at Kirkland & Ellis, where he earned consecutive Pro Bono Service Awards for representing asylum seekers, death row inmates, and veterans. Before law school, he worked at the ground level of criminal justice and economic reform throughout California, contributing to advocacy that helped halt the construction of a new county jail and supporting the launch of the nation’s first universal basic income pilot in Stockton.

Harold holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from UCLA.

“I’m honored to join DC Justice Lab because they understand something a lot of institutions don’t; that reform without proximity to the people most impacted isn’t reform at all, it’s exploitation. That’s been the standard I’ve tried to hold myself to my whole career, and it’s the standard DC Justice Lab brings to this work every day.”