Kelly S. McGinn

Kelly S. McGinn is a member of the Board of Directors of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington and Chair of their Advancement and Communications Committee. She has been particularly active in development efforts as the Co-Chair of the Special Gifts Committee for the annual Ball and served as Master of Ceremonies for the 2022 Ball. Her passion for promoting Catholic social teaching, particularly the right to life and centrality of the family, led her to run for office in 2019. She was the 2019 Republican Nominee for the 13th District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. During that season of campaigning, Kelly was a proud proponent of her most deeply held values informed by her Catholic faith, including protecting the vulnerable at every stage of human life from conception to natural death.

A 1991 summa cum laude graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she was salutatorian and a Rhodes Scholar finalist, and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1996, she practiced international trade and communications law in Washington, D.C. During her years in private practice Kelly also sought out pro bono work focused on helping refugees seeking political asylum. For example, she succeeded in securing political asylum for a citizen of Iraq who had been tortured by Saddam Hussein’s Revolutionary Guard and the three surviving children of a diplomat from Chad who was assassinated. She also successfully represented an African immigrant who had been taken advantage of by an unscrupulous business in a civil proceeding for damages in D.C. Superior Court.

Kelly later served as Senior Counsel for International Human Rights to Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), where she was the Senator’s principal advisor in his tireless work to protect people suffering persecution around the globe in countries including North Korea, China, the Sudan, Egypt, and Russia. Much of that work focused on promoting religious freedom. Since the adoption of her oldest child in 2003, Kelly has been a full-time mother. After being blessed by the birth of three additional biological children, she homeschooled for six years and now sends her children to Diocese of Arlington parochial schools. In addition to caring for her family, she remains active as a volunteer in the community and as an engaged citizen, advocating for her neighbors on various public policy issues including pro-life, fair housing, and family-friendly zoning before the Manassas City Council, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, as well as before the General Assembly in Richmond.

She and her husband, Jerry, are parishioners at St. Timothy Catholic Church in Chantilly, and were active members of their former parish, All Saints Catholic Church in Manassas, where they helped found and grow the Marriage Ministry of All Saints (MASS) to promote successful and stable marriages for both married and engaged couples. They have also been also active supporters of the San Gabriel Mission of All Saints Church, which is a nascent parish forming in Manassas Park, Virginia.