Wendy J. Olson

Olson was born in Pocatello, Idaho, and attended Pocatello High School. Olson attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1986.[2] She served as an intern in the sports department of the Los Angeles Times before leaving to attend Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, California. She graduated from Stanford with a Juris Doctor in 1990. She interned with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, the Student Press Law Center, and the Media Access Project.[3]

Olson served as a law clerk for Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein on the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington for two years immediately after finishing law school. She served as a trial attorney and later Deputy Director of the National Church Arson Task Force in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division from 1992 to 1997. From 1994 to 1997, she also worked part-time as an adjunct professor at George Washington University Law School.

In 1997, Olson joined the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Idaho, rising to the rank of Senior Litigation Counsel at the time of her appointment in 2010.[4]

After Olson resigned in 2017, she joined the Boise office of Stoel Rives, a law firm that operates in the Pacific Northwest.[5][6] In 2021, Olson was included on a shortlist of possible nominees to succeed Judge B. Lynn Winmill.[7][8]