Georgia K. McMillen
Attorney at Law
About Ms. McMillen's legal practice.
Ms. McMillen’s law office emphasizes counseling and zealous representation of clients in difficult situations.
She has extensive sentencing, appellate and post-conviction litigation experience, having represented clients on appeal from convictions and sentences imposed in both federal and state courts. She has reversed convictions, sentences and achieved sentence reductions. She has represented numerous clients before the Hawai`i state appellate courts and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She also has extensive experience representing clients before the United States District Court in sentencing proceedings, and post-sentencing proceedings including Rule 35 motions for reduction of sentence. She co-authored the Ninth Circuit’s Appellate Practice Guide and has written articles for the Hawai`i Bar Journal on appellate matters. She serves as a mentor attorney in the Ninth Circuit's mentoring program.
Ms. McMillen’s practice in federal defense cases has included some of the most complex and rigorous prosecutions in Hawai`i’s federal court history, including an appeal from a conviction for selling military stealth technology to foreign governments, and racketeering convictions related to Hawaii’s billion-dollar illegal gambling industry. She has also represented clients in cases involving: tax fraud and evasion; mortgage fraud; immigration fraud; immigration offenses; misuse of public funds; alien smuggling; mail fraud; wire fraud; drug trafficking. She has assisted clients under federal and military criminal investigation, helping to influence and minimize the charges filed. She has assisted clients charged with domestic violence, trespassing and other misdemeanors, and sought expungement of criminal records. Ms. McMillen has assisted armed forces personnel against the threat of military installation debarment, as well as protecting their ability to gain promotion and security clearances.
About Ms. McMillen.
Ms. McMillen is a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools, the University of Hawai`i, and New York Law School where she served as the managing editor of the Human Rights Annual and graduated with honors in 1987. She clerked for the Appellate Division, Superior Court of New Jersey. In New York and New Jersey, Ms. McMillen commenced her diverse legal career in the litigation group at Lowenstein Sandler where she represented individual and corporate clients in complex business and commercial litigation, employment cases and environmental insurance coverage disputes. She also practiced with Ross & Hardies (now McGuire Woods), representing financial institutions and other clients in commercial litigation, bankruptcy proceedings and appeals. In 1998 she returned home to Hawai`i.
In addition to litigation, Ms. McMillen has extensive mediation experience: www.hawaiimediate.com. She mediates for the Hawai`i Supreme Court's Appellate Mediation Program, for the Mediation Center of the Pacific's ACCESS ADR Program, and with DPR, Dispute Prevention and Resolution in Honolulu. She has mediated numerous cases on a volunteer basis for Mediation Services of Maui. She serves as an arbitrator to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Ms. McMillen is a former per diem judge for the State of Hawai`i in the Family and District Courts for the Second Circuit, Maui.
Ms. McMillen has served as adjunct faculty at Hawai`i Pacific University and University of Hawai`i Maui College teaching business law, and criminal law and procedure. She has written articles concerning appellate litigation, including: Preserving Legal Issues for Appeal, Hawai`i Bar Journal, Vol. 5, No. 13, 2001; Success on Appeal, Choosing Issues with Favorable Standards of Review, Hawai`i Bar Journal, January 2002. She is a coauthor of the Ninth Circuit Appellate Practice Guide, available to attorneys and the public at the Ninth Circuit's website.
Her service within the legal community includes: Board of Directors, Hawai`i State Bar Association (2015-2017); Appellate Lawyer Representative to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference (2010-2013); Board of Directors, Native Hawaiian Bar Association (2005-2014); Criminal Justice Act Panel, U.S. District Court Hawai‘i and Southern California (2001-present); Volunteer Legal Services of Hawai`i (2006-present). She is a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the Hawai`i Women Lawyers and the American Bar Association. On Maui she is a tireless supporter of the Outreach Committee at Keawala’i Congregational Church, which raises and disperses funds to those in need throughout Maui County.
Ms. McMillen is licensed to practice law in Hawai`i, New York and New Jersey; and in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second, Third and Ninth Circuits, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, New Jersey and Hawai'i.
Prior to her legal career, Ms. McMillen earned a masters degree in linguistics and anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington. She worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.