Women's and Gender Studies Program

Juley Fulcher has been working in the domestic violence field for more than ten years. In January 2004, Juley became the Director of the Washington, DC office of Break the Cycle, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage, educate and empower youth to build lives and communities from from domestic and dating violence. Break the Cycle furthers this mission by providing young people, ages 12 to 24, with preventive law-based education, free legal services, advocacy and support. As Director of the Washington, DC office of Break the Cycle, Juley oversees all aspects of development, program and outreach for the organization throughout the District of Columbia and works on national and local policy initiatives.

Juley graduated in 1994 from the Georgetown University Law Center where she worked on the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. She was a member the Georgetown Street Law Clinic teaching basic law in the DC prison system. She was also a member of the Georgetown Sex Discrimination Clinic for which she won the International Academy of Trial Lawyers Student Advocacy Award. Prior to law school, Juley received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Johns Hopkins University and she serves as a part-time faculty member of the Psychology Department of Towson University, the Women & Politics Institute of American University and the Women’s Studies Department at Georgetown University.

Throughout her legal career, Juley has specialized in domestic abuse. Immediately following law school, Juley served as Coordinator of the Criminal Justice Advocacy Project of the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Concurrently, she worked as the staff attorney and Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow for the Georgetown Sex Discrimination Clinic where she co-taught a clinical course in which law students are trained and supervised as they litigate domestic violence cases.

Following her fellowship, Juley became an Associate at Thyden, Gross & Callahan where she practiced matrimonial law. She then became a consultant on violence against women for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund where she worked on drafting legislation to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. She spent more than five years as the Public Policy Director for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence where she was responsible for all policy, strategy and lobbying efforts of NCADV and managed the Washington, DC office. She has testified before Congress on multiple occasions and has been interviewed extensively by the media including CNN, Fox News, and CBS News.

During her tenure at NCADV, Juley led the successful grassroots campaign to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act in 2000. She also served as a Visiting Professor in the Georgetown Domestic Violence Clinic. In 2002, Juley took a leave of absence from NCADV in order to spend a period of residency in Japan under a Local Government and Public Policy Fellowship from the Japan Society where she researched the governmental and non-governmental systems in Japan for addressing violence against women and lectured extensively throughout Japan.

Juley is admitted to the State Bar of the District of Columbia and is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She is the co-author of a domestic violence trial practice manual and currently serves on the Steering Committee of the District of Columbia Crime Victims Assistance Academy.