Nathan Maxwell is a Senior Attorney at Lambda Legal’s Midwest Regional Office, based in Chicago, IL. He is the lead attorney in Iowa Safe Schools v. Reynolds, in which Lambda Legal—along with ACLU of Iowa and Jenner & Block  LLP—is challenging SF 496, a sweeping Iowa law that seeks to erase any recognition of LGBTQ+ people from public schools, ban books with sexual or LGBTQ+ content, and forcibly out trans or nonbinary students.

Before joining the team at Lambda Legal, Nathan was an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Federal Public Defender in the District of Arizona. Nathan worked in the Capital Habeas Unit, representing people on death row in Arizona, Utah, and Texas in habeas, clemency, and end stage litigation. Nathan clerked for Judge Terrence Berg in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and for Judge Amy Totenberg in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Before clerking, Nathan was the Justice Franklin D. Cleckley Fellow for the West Virginia Innocence Project at the West Virginia University College of Law, where he represented wrongly convicted people in prisons in West Virginia and Mississippi, supervised law students in the legal aid clinic, and co-taught a law school seminar on habeas corpus.

Nathan Maxwell is a 2016 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where he was awarded the 2016 James C. Hormel Public Service Award. Nathan also completed the Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy from the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice (formerly the School of Social Service Administration).

Prior to law school, received a Bachelor of Science in Human Health Studies from Arizona State University in 2008. Nathan worked as an outreach specialist at the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS, as a case manager for adults living with serious mental illnesses, and as the coordinator for a program seeking to improve physical health outcomes for adults living with serious mental illnesses and chronic diseases.

Nathan is admitted to the State Bar of Arizona.