Teal Luthy Miller

Teal advises clients in high-stakes federal and state litigation and on prelitigation matters. She has argued more than 75 cases in the federal courts of appeals. She has served as the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington and has more than 20 years of experience handling civil and criminal appeals across the full spectrum of legal issues, including constitutional and administrative law.

Immediately before joining Davis Wright Tremaine, Teal served for two years as a senior leader in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Western District of Washington. She supervised operations, criminal investigations and trials, civil cases against the United States, and affirmative civil litigation. She also worked with federal agencies on critical security issues and law enforcement initiatives, and with Native American tribes, the federal district court, state and local governments, and corporations and community groups.

From 2021 to 2024, Teal served as the Appellate Chief in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington. In that role, she led a highly regarded team of appellate lawyers, handling more than 100 civil and criminal appeals in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit each year and advising trial teams on critical trial motions and how to preserve the record for appeal. Teal also briefed and argued some of the office's most sensitive cases.

Before she became the Appellate Chief, Teal was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Appellate Division. Before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office, she served for a decade in the Appellate Section of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. In these roles, Teal handled cases in all of the United States Courts of Appeals and presented oral argument in nine of them. She also drafted merits briefs and briefs in opposition to certiorari in the Supreme Court.

Teal knows the Ninth Circuit particularly well. She served as an Appellate Lawyer Representative to that court for four years and has argued 50 cases in it—winning more than 85% of them.

Teal has also taught appellate advocacy at the Department of Justice's National Advocacy Center, served on rulemaking and professional committees, was selected as a member of the Department of Justice's national Appellate Chiefs' Working Group, served as a fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General, and clerked for a federal appellate judge.