Kelly Barrett is a Peter Gruber Visiting Clinical Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and sentencing resource counsel for the Federal Public and Community Defender Program. At Yale, Barrett co-teaches the Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic, Mental Health Justice Clinic, and Criminal Justic Clinic at the Law School and co-teaches psychiatric fellows at the Law and Psychiatry program at the Medical School. She also co-supervised the Curtis-Liman Clinical Legal Fellowship focused on supervised release for five years.
For the last nearly 15 years she was an assistant federal defender and first assistant federal defender at the Office of the Federal Defender for the District of Connecticut, serving on the District’s Support Court team and Reentry Court team. Barrett testified at the United States Sentencing Commission in 2023 on reduction in sentence issues and in 2025 on supervised release. Before joining the Federal Defender Office, Barrett practiced in the white collar, securities enforcement & litigation, and commercial litigation groups at Arnold & Porter.
Barrett graduated from Yale University and the inaugural class of Public Interest/Public Service Scholars from American University Washington College of Law. She clerked for Hon. Stefan R. Underhill in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut and Hon Dolores K. Sloviter in the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.