Matt Gonzalez serves as our Chief Attorney. Before rejoining our Office as Chief Attorney in 2011, Matt served as Deputy Public Defender from 1991 to 2001, where he established himself as a skilled trial lawyer, trying many cases including serious felonies, three-strike cases, and life-in-prison matters. From 2001-2005, Matt served a term as an elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. During his tenure he led the campaign for a ballot measure that created the highest minimum wage in the country. From 2005-2011, Matt was a partner in the seven-member law firm of Gonzalez & Leigh LLP, where he tried criminal and civil matters, and argued civil and criminal appeals, in both the state and federal courts. Notably, in 2009, he won the first punitive damages verdict in a federal civil rights case against an elected district attorney (Solano County) in California’s history.
In 2017, Matt was the lead attorney on a team that represented Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an undocumented immigrant falsely accused of deliberately shooting a young woman on a San Francisco pier. Mr. Zarate was acquitted of all murder-related charges and Matt was subsequently honored with Defender of the Year, along with his co-counsel, Francisco Ugarte, by the California Public Defenders Association. In 2019, Matt was part of the team that successfully represented Public Defender Mano Raju (then-felony manager) against court-imposed sanctions in the case People vs. Landers. The Court of Appeal decision led to the articulation of important defense discovery rights.
The McAllen, Texas native received his Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University and his Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including Lawyer of the Year from the San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association, the In Defense of Animals Guardian Award, and the Premio Bert Corona from California’s Mexican American Political Association. Matt’s Raven Lecture on Access to Justice, at U.C. Berkeley Law School, was published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2005.