Todd A. Cox is Associate Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund.
As one of two Associate Directors-Counsel, Todd works in partnership with LDF’s eighth President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel Samuel Spital, and LDF’s senior leadership team to set and execute the strategic direction of the organization’s policy and external work.
Todd assumed the role of Associate Director-Counsel after more than five years at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, where he most recently served as the Vice President of Programs, providing strategic leadership and oversight of the foundation’s program areas, including racial justice, economic justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, political participation, and international human rights. Before joining Wellspring, Todd served as LDF’s Director of Policy, leading federal- and state-level advocacy across the organization’s four historic pillars: political participation, education, economic justice, and criminal justice. At the time, it was Todd’s second tour at LDF. Earlier in his career, Todd served as Associate Counsel at LDF and led the political participation team, where he advocated for voting rights and litigated cases that challenged efforts to suppress the vote and quell political participation. He also litigated education cases.
His prolific social justice career extends far beyond the halls of LDF. Indeed, Todd was Director of Criminal Justice Policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP), Racial Justice Program Officer and Acting Deputy Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, and Director of the Office of Communications and Legislative Affairs at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a presidential appointee in the Obama Administration. As a presidential appointee, he also represented the agency on the Federal Interagency Reentry Council, a body dedicated to developing federal reentry policies, and represented the United States as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, Switzerland.
Todd has testified before Congress and state legislatures, made numerous media appearances, and authored several articles. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Todd was a senior consultant with Andersen Consulting of Arthur Andersen & Co. before becoming a lawyer.
