Alex Garcia is a Maryland criminal defense attorney with the Law Office of Maria Mena. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Garcia served the indigent community of Montgomery County as an assistant public defender with the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, and subsequently worked at another prominent criminal defense firm in Montgomery County. Mr. Garcia has extensive experience representing clients at all stages of criminal proceedings in both District and Circuit Courts from initial bond reviews, bench and jury trials to violation of probation hearings. His clients faced charges ranging from DUI/DWI to assault, drug offenses, sex offenses, up to common law murder.
Mr. Garcia is committed to fighting zealously for each client and believes every criminally accused person deserves an advocate who will consider their unique background as a strength in aggressively building a defense to reach the best possible outcome.
Moreover, Mr. Garcia believes “criminality” often speaks more to a person’s conditions rather than their character and finds that the prosecution of cases is sometimes unfairly driven by factors such as class, race, and immigration status.
Mr. Garcia earned his J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law and was admitted to the Maryland Bar in 2020. He was the first member of his family to attend college and law school. Mr. Garcia served as a student attorney for the law school’s Criminal Defense clinic, where he first gained litigation experience representing clients in Montgomery County District and Circuit Court. Mr. Garcia was also a member of the International Human Rights Law Clinic, in which he assisted with a lawsuit on behalf of inmates the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (“ADX” – a federal supermax facility in Florence, Colorado) challenging the confinement conditions before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. During law school, Mr. Garcia interned for the Honorable Judge Danya Dayson at D.C. Superior Court, at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Montgomery County, and at the Maryland Office of the Federal Public Defender in Baltimore City. While at the Office of the Federal Public Defender, Mr. Garcia authored a motion to dismiss an indictment for a client charged with illegal re-entry following deportation, arguing that his client’s underlying deportation order was invalid based on constitutional grounds held by Supreme Court’s then-recent decision in Pereira v. Sessions (2018); the motion was granted, and his client’s case dismissed. In his last year of law school, Mr. Garcia successfully participated in trial advocacy programs hosted by the National Criminal Defense College (NCDC) and The Public Defender Service for D.C. Mr. Garcia received his B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Philosophy from American University in 2017.
Mr. Garcia is the proud son of immigrant parents from El Salvador and Nicaragua, and is a native Spanish speaker. He grew up in Montgomery County and lived a part of his childhood in Frederick County before moving to D.C. where he currently lives. Mr. Garcia prides himself on using his lived experiences, expertise, and love for the “DMV” region’s culture and its people to fight for his clients.
