U.S. Attorney General William Barr appointed St. Croix native Denise A. Hinds Roach as an immigration judge in June.
Hinds Roach grew up in Grove Place, in the center of St. Croix, and maintains ties to the community and its history and public life.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982 from Duquesne University, and a Juris Doctor degree in 1986 from Duquesne University School of Law. From 2012 to 2019, she served as a family court judge on St. Croix. During her term as a family court judge, she also served as a designated Supreme Court Justice on the U.S. Virgin Islands Supreme Court.
When she took office as a V.I. Superior Court judge for Family Court in 2013, Roach said she was most interested in cases involving children and families, and that this passion led her to be nominated to take over the family division of the Superior Court.
From 1994 to 2012, she served as an assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of the Virgin Islands on St. Croix. During that time, she prosecuted violent crimes, public corruption, drug trafficking, economic crimes and child sexual exploitation. From 2006 to 2007, she also served as deputy criminal chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of the Virgin Islands. In 1994, she served as an assistant attorney general with the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Justice. From 1991 to 1994, she was an assistant solicitor with the Fulton County Solicitor’s Office in Atlanta. Hinds Roach is a member of the Georgia State Bar, Pennsylvania State Bar and U.S. Virgin Islands Bar.
She was among a cohort of 46 new immigration judges Barr appointed, including three assistant chief immigration judges. This class brings the immigration judge corps to 509, which is the highest total ever, and double the size of 2015 levels, according to a release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
