Tuwanda Rush Williams was elected to Superior Court of Gwinnett County, Georgia on June 18, 2024. Judge-Elect Williams joined the law firm of Thompson, O’Brien, Kappler & Nasuti as Of Counsel on June 5, 2023. She is formerly a Deputy County Attorney in the Gwinnett County Department of Law, where she supervised and managed the work of Senior Assistant County Attorneys who handle both transactional and litigation matters for Gwinnett County Government elected officials, departments, offices, and the judicial system. She has been a member of the Georgia Bar since October 1992. Her 31 years of legal experience is expansive, as she has formidable knowledge of over twenty-five areas of the law. For most of her legal career, she has been a local government lawyer, and her practice has been concentrated in section 1983 civil rights and constitutional law and litigation, state law claims of assault, battery, unlawful arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution, tort claims, tax appeals, eminent domain, public procurement and contract disputes, personal injury, property damage, and elections litigation. She was also a seven-year member of the Gwinnett County Indigent Defense Governing Committee, responsible for recruiting, managing, and reviewing and paying the invoices of lawyers who represent indigent criminal defendants.
Prior to her employment with the Gwinnett County Department of Law, Tuwanda was employed with the City of Atlanta Law Department, where she practiced section 1983 civil rights litigation, Title VII, ADA, and ADEA employment litigation, contract and procurement litigation, personal injury, property damage, and workers’ compensation defense litigation. She also handled transactional matters in the areas of procurement and contracts, and she drafted various policies and training materials for the department and the attorneys. She managed jury trials as first chair in both the state and federal courts and prevailed in those trials. Tuwanda’s legal experience also includes four years in private practice in the areas of personal injury litigation, workers’ compensation employer and insurance defense, domestic relations (family law), misdemeanor criminal defense as a court-appointed attorney in Fulton County State Court, simple wills, and landlord-tenant law.
Tuwanda served as an officer of the Gwinnett County Bar Association for five years, culminating her service as President of the organization in June 2013, and she holds the distinction as the first African American officer of the Gwinnett Bar Association in its 60-plus year history. In addition, she co-established the Gwinnett Chapter of the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers in March 2009 while serving as Statewide Chair of the Membership Committee, and she is a Past President of the Gwinnett Chapter. Tuwanda currently holds active memberships in the Gwinnett County Bar Association, the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers, the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys, the 1818 Club, the Gwinnett Giving Girls (a philanthropic group of women under the umbrella of the Community Foundation of Northeast Georgia who award grants to start-up nonprofits that serve primarily women and children), the Gwinnett Section of the National Council of Negro Women, the Peachtree Rose Club, and the Gwinnett County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, where she has recently served as Chairperson of the Scholarship Committee. In past years, she also served as the Sorority Chapter’s Legal Advisor/Contract Compliance Officer and as a member of the Social Action/Political Awareness & Involvement, Nominating, Elections, and May Week Committees. Tuwanda is also a 2015 graduate of the 30th Anniversary Class of Leadership Gwinnett, and she has served on various “learning day” committees and the Glance Gwinnett Committee since her graduation.
Tuwanda has performed dozens of hours of community service through nonprofit organizations such as Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Jack & Jill of America, the Peachtree Rose Club, the National Council of Negro Women, Family Promise of Gwinnett, and the former Rotary Club of Gwinnett Tomorrow. She is a past recipient of the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers’ President’s Award and Spotlight Award, the Gwinnett County Bar Association’s Past President’s Award, the State Bar of Georgia’s Law Day Award, and she received the Trailblazer Award from The Family Gwinnett during their inaugural “Legends, Icons, Trailblazers and Emerging Leaders” Black History Program. She also received the Phoenix Award from the Gwinnett Chapter of the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers in November 2022. Lastly, she has received recognition as a “Trailblazer” of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys and as a finalist for the “Pay It Forward Award” of the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce Moxie Awards.
Tuwanda is a native of Rochester, New York, and she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Syracuse University and a Juris Doctorate degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law, where she was selected as “Best Oralist” in the Charles S. Desmond Memorial Moot Court Competition. She has been a resident of Gwinnett County since December 2000 and is a longtime member of Friendship Baptist Church in Duluth, Georgia, where she has co-taught Wednesday Night Bible Study to high school students and served on the Finance, Greeters and Marriage Ministries. Tuwanda is married to Dr. Anthony Williams, and they have two adult children and a daughter-in-love.