John Ward received his J.D. degree from Boston University. Law School in听1976. After clerking for Judge Raymond Pettine in the U.S. District Court for the听District of Rhode Island, he went into private practice in Boston in 1977. In 1978,听in response to a pattern of police harrassment of gay men, he gathered a group of听community activists and founded GLAD, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and听Defenders (now GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders). He has handled a听number of noteworthy cases involving LGBTQ clients, including the Rhode Island听prom case, vindicating the right of a high school senior to bring another young听man to the prom as his date, and the Boston St. Patrick鈥檚 Day Parade case. In that听case, he was the first openly gay man to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.听Recently, he was co-counsel in a case involving the first transgender woman in听Massachusetts to be housed in a gender-appropriate prison 鈥� MCI Framingham,听defending her against what the defense alleged was a retaliatory criminal听prosecution. Ward also represented death row inmates in post-conviction听proceedings in California. Ward was recently selected by the History Project to听receive the 2021 Historymaker Award. He is still in private practice in Boston and听lives in Providence with his husband, Alain Balseiro.听
