Christina Swarns, a capital defense lawyer and litigation director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has been chosen to lead the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York.

She will begin Aug. 28 as attorney-in-charge, succeeding Richard Greenberg, who retired after more than 20 years.

Swarns is one of only a handful of black women to have argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, the OAD said Monday in announcing her appointment. In the 2016-2017 Supreme Court term, Swarns argued and won Buck v. Davis, a Texas death penalty case challenging the introduction of explicitly racially biased evidence at trial, the OAD said.