Joseph Longley was a project director with the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the O’Neill Institute. He is a civil rights and prisoners’ rights attorney whose work focuses on ensuring access to medications for opioid use disorder for all people who need it, including incarcerated people.
Prior to joining the O’Neill Institute, Longley was an Equal Justice Works fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he brought lawsuits under the Eighth Amendment and Americans with Disabilities Act against jails and prisons for failure to provide adequate healthcare for individuals with opioid use disorder. Longley has also brought lawsuits against a number of jails, prisons, and immigration detention facilities for failure to provide adequate protections in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Longley clerked for Judge Roy McLeese of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Longley received his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Board of Student Advisers, and a B.A. from Ohio State University.