Katie Dorian

Maryland Office of the Attorney General

Katie Dorian serves as chief of the criminal division at the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, a role she has held since joining the division in 2015 as organized crime chief.

In March 2024, when a container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge and caused a collapse that killed six construction workers, Attorney General Anthony Brown contacted Dorian the following day to coordinate and manage the office’s entire state legal response. Despite having spent her entire career in criminal law, she was appointed special assistant attorney general overseeing the bridge’s recovery and restoration effort. In that capacity, she learned about the various state agencies impacted by the disaster, convened emergency meetings with the office’s principal counsel, coordinated with the governor’s legal counsel and built an internal team with leads assigned to the most critical issues — all while continuing to maintain her full-time role as criminal division chief. She has said the role gave her the opportunity to learn new areas of law and discover in more detail the tremendous work the rest of the lawyers in the office performed.

During her time as a law student at the University of Baltimore, internships were a formative part of shaping her legal career. When she joined the Criminal Division in 2015, it had virtually no law clerk program. She took it upon herself to start one, reaching out to law schools to speak about the division’s work and attract student interest. That program has since grown into one of the most robust in the Maryland Office of the Attorney General. As her career has grown, her mentorship has expanded to include young lawyers both within her division and across the office.

This is an honoree profile from The Daily Record’s Top 100 Women awards. Information for this profile was sourced from the honoree’s application for the award. The honoree profiles were written using an artificial intelligence program and supported by honoree nominations, applications and letters of recommendation. Each profile was reviewed, fact-checked and edited for accuracy by The Daily Record’s editorial staff.