Stephen Curran is an adjunct faculty member at the Boston College Law School, teaching federal criminal civil rights law. Curran served as a federal prosecutor with the Civil Rights and Criminal Divisions of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1998 to 2018. For most of this period, he was a litigating attorney, deputy chief, and special litigation counsel in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division, where he investigated and prosecuted cases involving bias-motivated violence, official misconduct, and involuntary servitude. He has served as the Civil Rights Division’s lead prosecutor in numerous hate crime and law enforcement misconduct cases, including the 2015 race-motivated killings at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston (US v. Roof), the 2017 bias-motivated mass car attack on anti-racism protestors in Charlottesville (US v. Fields), and the 2004 beating of a young, multi-racial man by Milwaukee police officers (US v. Bartlett).
During his Justice Department tenure, Curran also served in the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, where he investigated and prosecuted criminal cases involving human rights and war crimes, human rights and war crimes-related immigration and naturalization fraud, international violent crimes, and international criminal travel networks. Curran also served as a civil prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division’s Employment Litigation Section, where he investigated and litigated civil actions enforcing Title VII against state and local government employers, as well as cases defending federal contracting and employment-related affirmative action programs.
Curran received a B.A. degree from Bates College in 1981, and a J.D. degree from Georgetown University in 1996. He also received a M.A. degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University in 1989. Prior to his legal career, Curran served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy, between 1982-1993.
