Katherine Gallagher is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she represents victims seeking to hold government officials and corporations accountable for serious human rights violations. Her cases in U.S. federal courts include Al Shimari v. CACI, a damages action against a private military contractor implicated in Abu Ghraib torture, Defense for Children International-Palestine v. Biden, seeking injunctive relief to enforce obligations under the Genocide Convention, In re: Xe Services Alien Tort Litigation, brought by Iraqi victims and their families against Blackwater, and Arar v. Ashcroft, challenging Bush-era extraordinary rendition to torture. She has also filed multiple amicus briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of human rights organizations or international law scholars. Additionally, Katie has represented victims before the International Criminal Court, including in a successful appeal that led to the opening of an investigation of U.S. torture, and before regional human rights and U.N. treaty bodies, including the Committee Against Torture. Prior to joining CCR, she worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2001-2006, first as a law clerk in Chambers and then in the Office of the Prosecutor; with the Organization for Security in Cooperation (OSCE) Mission in Kosovo from 2000-2001; and with the Special Court for Sierra Leone. She has been an adjunct professor of clinical law at New York University School of Law in the Global Justice Clinic and a visiting professor at CUNY Law School in the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic.

Katie received her B.A. in Political Science from the College of the Holy Cross, her M.A. in Journalism/Middle East Studies from New York University, and her J.D. from the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the CUNY Law Review (formerly the New York City Law Review).  She has previously served as a Vice President on the board of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), on the Editorial Committee of the Journal of International Criminal Justice, and as a member of the ASIL's Annual Meeting Committee.

Katie's publications include Alternatives to Prosecutions: Exploring Accountability for Private Military Contractor Harms through Civil Litigation and Soft Law Mechanisms in The International Criminal Responsibility for War’s Funders and Profiteers (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and her academic writing has appeared in the Santa Clara Journal of International Law and the Leiden Journal of International Law, among others, and popular writing in The New York Times, The Guardian and Just Security blog.