Anna Marie Gallagher has practiced immigration and refugee law for more than three decades, working in the United States, Central America and Europe. Her experience includes private practice, advocacy and several years in academia.

Immediately before joining CLINIC in February 2019, Gallagher was a shareholder and head of the litigation practice area for Maggio, Kattar, Nahajzer + Alexander. Prior to her time with the firm, she worked as a consultant in Europe to organizations with a focus on policy planning and analysis, training and research on refugee and migration issues. She was a member of the Extended International Team of the Jesuit Refugee Service’s International Office and of the Policy Team of the Jesuit Refugee Service Europe. 

Gallagher was a co-founder and former president of the board of directors of the International Coalition on the Detention of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the promotion of human rights for refugees and migrants around the world who are subject to administrative detention. She helped found the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos, known as CALDH), in the early 1990s. The international nonprofit focused on advocating for the rights of internally displaced persons and returned refugees in Guatemala.  

Upon her return to the United States, Gallagher was Deputy Director of the Legal Action Center for the American Immigration Law Foundation. She was a Teaching Fellow at the Center for Applied Legal Studies at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she taught asylum law and procedures in a clinical setting. She also was the Pedro Arrupe Tutor of Migration and Refugee Law at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain, teaching courses on human rights, migration and refugee law.

She has written extensively on issues of immigration and refugees in the United States and abroad. Born in Philadelphia, she is the daughter of Irish immigrants.

Gallagher received her juris doctorate from the Antioch School of Law, her Masters in Advocacy from Georgetown University Law Center, and her bachelor’s from Temple University.