TJ Grayson is a clinical supervisor in the Policy Advocacy Clinic, where he supports community-led campaigns that challenge the harms of the criminal legal system and work to build community power. Previously, he served as a Civil Rights Fellow at the Social Justice Legal Foundation, receiving intensive training in civil rights litigation from experienced trial lawyers while pursuing Section 1983 cases against law enforcement and a class action against a private ICE detention facility.
Before his time at SJLF, TJ was a Justice Catalyst Fellow at the Advancement Project, where he supported abolitionist campaigns to end police violence, with a focus on addressing the power and influence of police associations.
TJ graduated from Yale Law School in 2021 and UC Berkeley in 2016 after transferring from Santa Rosa Junior College in 2014. At Yale, he was president of the Black Law Students Association, co-director of the Critical Race Theory Conference on Reparations and Prison Abolition, and a member of OutLaws and First-Generation Professionals. He also served as a Coker Teaching Fellow in constitutional law, worked as a research assistant for Professor James Forman Jr. and the Yale Law Justice Collaboratory, and participated in the Advanced Appellate Litigation and Strategic Advocacy clinics.
TJ’s research interests include policing, community organizing, movement lawyering, and violence prevention. His work on these topics has been published in The Washington Post, Slate Magazine, and The Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics.