Eugene Oliver is the Managing Partner of Evans Oliver, PLC in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Eugene focuses his practice on criminal defense in both state and federal courts. Eugene dedicates a significant portion of his practice to public defense in state court and he is on the Criminal Justice Act panel for the Western District of Virginia.
Eugene is a life member of NACDL and has served on the NACDL Board of Directors since 2022. He is currently a co-chair of NACDL’s Public Defense Committee. Eugene currently serves as a vice chair for quarterly meetings with NACDL’s CLE Institute. He is a member of the Membership, Diversity, and Criminalization of Voting Rights committees and the Task Force on Police Accountability. Eugene has presented at NACDL conferences and routinely participates in a variety of NACDL programs. Eugene serves as a trustee for the NACDL Foundation for Criminal Justice, which is the foundation that preserves and promotes the core values of NACDL.
Eugene currently serves on and chairs the Leroy R. Hassell Sr. Indigent Criminal Defense Planning Committee, which plans an annual free seminar for public defenders and court appointed counsel in Virginia sponsored by the Supreme Court of Virginia and the Virginia State Bar. Eugene served as the Vice-Chair of the Planning Committee for the 2024 seminar.
Eugene is a Past-President of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, having served in 2021 and served on VACDL’s Board of Directors from 2018 to 2022. During his time on the Board of Directors of VACDL, Eugene organized CLEs, taught at CLEs, participated in lobbying on several criminal justice reforms (including successful efforts in abolishing mandatory jury sentencing, probation reform, and eliminating presumptions against bond to name a few), and advocated for a renewed organizational commitment to criminal and social justice. He served as chair of VACDL’s Judicial Nominations, Indigent Representation, and Executive Committees along with being an active member of its Legislative Committee.
Eugene has dedicated considerable time and efforts into improving the criminal justice system in Virginia. He has advocated the Virginia General Assembly to improve compensation in public defense cases, to establish more public defender offices, and to increase resources available to indigent defendants, including on bills on increasing access to mental health defenses. Furthermore, he has lobbied against bills that would increase criminal penalties or infringe on the civil rights and liberties of ordinary citizens. He regularly participates in lobbying efforts in the Virginia General Assembly in favor of criminal justice and reform bills. He took the lead within VACDL in advocating to members of both the House of Delegates and the State Senate in favor of SB5007 in 2020 which led to the once unthinkable elimination of mandatory jury sentencing in Virginia, which was one of the biggest deterrents to the constitutional right to a jury trial in Virginia.
Eugene is married and the proud father to twins. He was the first person in his family to graduate from college (and subsequently law school), graduating with a B.A. from the College of William & Mary in 2005 and the George Washington University Law School in 2008. In his free time, he follows Baltimore sports teams and basketball in general, hikes, travels, and goes to concerts.
