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Devora W. Kirschner

Chief of District Court Division

Devora W. Kirschner

Ms. Kirschner began her tenure at the HoCoSAO in 2001 as a member of the District Court Division. Throughout the next decade, she helped create and expand a more formalized Domestic Violence Unit, largely in part by securing grant funding which increased staffing. She later became Chief of the DV Unit in 2008. That same year, she co-established, with the Howard County Police Department, the Howard County Domestic Violence Fatality and Near Fatality Review Team. In 2011, she became a member of the Circuit Court Division, where she handled felony cases including domestic violence, animal cruelty, robbery, controlled dangerous substances, and homicides.  In April of 2019, Ms. Kirschner was appointed to Deputy Chief of the Special Victims Unit, where she currently handles a majority of the office’s felony domestic violence and animal cruelty cases, as well as other Special Victim Unit cases.  Before her tenure at the HoCoSAO, Devora worked as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable D. Warren Donohue, a now-retired judge of the Montgomery County Circuit Court. Ms. Kirschner graduated from Rutgers College with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Political Science. She received her J.D. from University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore.