Judge Smith was appointed by Mayor Michael B. Hancock and was sworn in on January 9, 2019. She obtained her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Colorado, and her LL.M from Columbia Law School. Before being appointed, Judge Smith served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) for the District of Colorado for 14 years. Judge Smith was Chief of the office’s Special Prosecutions Section, and in 2016, she helped form and head the office’s Cybercrime and National Security Section. During her time as an AUSA, Judge Smith prosecuted and supervised cases involving cybercrime, national security, terrorism, intellectual property, counterproliferation, child exploitation and trafficking, murder, hate crime, prison crime, as well as street gang, drug, and gun crime. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office, Judge Smith taught legal writing and appellate advocacy at Columbia Law School. She also served as a Deputy District Attorney for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, trying both criminal and, later, rehabilitation aspects of cases in the office’s Juvenile Division. Prior to her roles in the public sector and academia, Judge Smith was an associate at Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher’s Denver office where she took part in the Denver City Attorney Office’s Municipal Court Trial Advocacy Program. Judge Smith clerked for Judge Brorby of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Judge Smith is a member of the Colorado Women’s Bar Association, the Sam Cary Bar Association, the LGBT Bar Association, and the Hispanic Bar Association.