MEET DA STEVE MULROY

Steven J. Mulroy

District Attorney General | Shelby County, Tennessee

Steven J. Mulroy was elected District Attorney for Shelby County, Tennessee, in August 2022. He oversees a staff of 238, including more than 110 prosecutors.

Mulroy graduated from Cornell University with Distinction in All Subjects and from William & Mary Law School, where he earned Order of the Coif honors.

In the 1990s, he served in the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., first as a civil rights litigator and later as a federal prosecutor. In 2000, he joined the University of Memphis as a law professor, spending 22 years teaching and publishing in criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional law, and civil rights. He also handled numerous pro bono criminal and civil rights cases in state and federal courts at both the trial and appellate levels. At the time of his election as DA, he held the title of Bredesen Professor of Law. Shortly after taking office, he became an Emeritus Professor.

Mulroy also served eight years on the Shelby County Commission after his election in 2006. During his tenure, he drafted the county's first ethics, living wage, animal welfare, and "cash for tires" ordinances, along with Tennessee's first legislation at any level prohibiting LGBT discrimination. He successfully advocated for increased county funding for homelessness and pre-K education and an end to the illegal practice of holding suspects for 48 hours without probable cause.

During the county's 2011 redistricting, he led the successful effort to replace large, three-commissioner districts with neighborhood-based, single-member districts, arguing that the change would encourage more competitive elections.

Mulroy is the author of Rethinking U.S. Election Law: Unskewing the System and dozens of scholarly articles on criminal law and civil rights. His work has appeared in national publications including Slate, Newsweek, The New Republic, Salon, The Hill, and Huffington Post. He has served as a legal commentator for MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN and testified before Congress and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Both his blood type and his chirpy personal motto is B positive.