Mary Moriarty
American lawyer and activist
Mary Frances Moriarty (born January 14, 1964) is an American attorney serving as the County Attorney of Hennepin County, Minnesota. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Moriarty previously served as the Chief Public Defender of Hennepin County.
Early life and education
Moriarty was born in Benson, Minnesota. Her mother, Linda, was an English teacher. Her father, Patrick, served as the Itasca County Attorney from 1963 to 1969, and was later a public defender in New Ulm. Moriarty worked briefly as a reporter before enrolling at Macalester College, where she played softball and basketball and majored in history and political science, earning her Bachelor of Arts in 1986. In 1989, she earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Minnesota Law School. After clerking for Hennepin County judge Kevin Burke and passing the bar exam, Moriarty went to work for the Hennepin County Public Defender's Office.
Career
Early in her career as a public defender, Moriarty argued a case that would eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court. A Minneapolis police officer had patted down a man and claimed that he could feel through the man's jacket that a small lump was crack cocaine, justifying the search.
The public source identifies “Mary Moriarty” as american lawyer and activist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mary, Moriarty and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105187822. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1963, 1969 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Moriarty” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.