Nancy Hollander

Nancy Hollander is an internationally recognized criminal defense lawyer from the Albuquerque, New Mexico, firm of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward P.A. She is also an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers, London, U.K. 

For more than three decades, Hollander’s practice has largely been devoted to representing individuals and organizations accused of crimes, including those involving national security issues, in trial and on appeal. She was lead appellate counsel for Chelsea Manning in the military appellate courts. She also won Manning’s release in 2017 when President Obama commuted her sentence from 35 years to seven years. Hollander has also represented two prisoners at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, and in 2016, she won the release of one of them – Mohamedou Ould Slahi – after 11 years of pro bono representation. His story is chronicled in his New York Times-bestselling book Guantánamo Diary, which Hollander helped facilitate and publish, and in a feature film, titled The Mauritanian.

For her other client at Guantánamo, Abd Rahim Al-Nashiri, who is facing the death penalty, she has won two cases in the European Court of Human Rights, providing funds for his family and accountability for his torture at the hands of agents of the U.S. government.

In addition to her criminal defense practice, Hollander has been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures, and administrative hearings, and she has argued and won a historic case involving religious freedom in the U.S. Supreme Court. Hollander also served as a consultant to the defense in a high-profile terrorism case in Ireland and has assisted counsel in other international cases.