Andrea Woods

A seasoned litigator with a passion for advocacy, Andrea Woods joined Budge & Heipt as an associate attorney in 2024.

Andrea received her B.A. with honors from Gonzaga University in 2009, where she was the only woman to serve as student body president for a 20-year span of the school’s history and a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship.

Andrea earned her law degree with high honors from the University of Washington in 2014, where she was a William H. Gates Public Service Law Scholar and president of the Student Bar Association.

After law school, Andrea clerked for Federal District Court Judge John Coughenour of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Following her federal clerkship, Andrea spent seven years as a staff attorney with the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she focused on litigation involving criminal justice reform. At the ACLU, Andrea sued jail officials across the country for their unconstitutional practices. She filed numerous complex civil rights lawsuits as lead counsel, authored reports, trained other attorneys, and spoke to the media and served on dozens of panels. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrea spearheaded the ACLU’s litigation efforts on behalf of medically vulnerable and disabled people in our nation’s jails, acting as the architect of the ACLU’s legal theories and coordinating the filing of dozens of high-profile cases. She is nationally recognized for her work, which has been featured in the Guardian, the Appeal, CNBC, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Memphis Flyer, the Dallas Morning News, and numerous other news outlets.

Andrea is fiercely dedicated to her work as a civil rights advocate and knows the myriad abuses that can occur behind bars. She’s a seasoned civil rights litigator who cares deeply about her colleagues and clients. She strives to bring humor, heart, and high-caliber work to each of her cases.

Andrea is a member of the Washington and New York bars and has been admitted to practice in the U.S. Courts of Appeal for the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits. Prior to law school, Andrea served for two years in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

Andrea lives in Seattle with her husband Michael and their young daughter. She enjoys gathering with friends, exploring new cities on foot, exercising, playing the flute and piano, and admiring the dogs at Seattle’s many kid-friendly breweries.