Hardy Vieux

Hardy Vieux serves as Kids in Need of Defense’s Chief of Staff. Prior to joining KIND in May 2021, Hardy served as the senior vice president, legal, at Human Rights First. There, he led and directed Human Rights First’s legal initiatives— including its pro bono legal representation, which pairs lawyers at the nation’s top law firms with indigent refugees in need of counsel in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Hardy also established and oversaw the organization’s impact litigation, which seeks to make a systemic change on behalf of those seeking asylum in the United States by challenging harmful governmental policies and laws in federal court. In addition to his role at KIND, Hardy teaches a graduate human rights law seminar at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. Prior to Human Rights First, Hardy served as a policy fellow in the Middle East, where he worked at Save the Children International in Amman, Jordan. Before that, he was in private legal practice in Washington, D.C., for over ten years. Before moving to private practice, Hardy was a criminal appellate defense counsel in the United States Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as lead counsel in capital punishment cases and national security cases. He is a frequent media commentator on military justice issues. Hardy started his legal career as a law clerk in a federal district court in Denver, Colorado. Hardy serves on the board of directors of the National Military of Justice, and the board of visitors of Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts and Sciences.