Vanita Gupta is the acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division and the top civil rights prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice. Formerly, she was a civil rights lawyer and the Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she oversaw the ACLU's national criminal justice reform efforts.
Gupta was born in the Philadelphia area of Pennsylvania to Indian immigrant parents. She spent most of her childhood in England and France. She is a graduate of Yale and New York University Law School, graduating from law school in 2001.