Representative Dalya Attar Contact information

Dalya Attar (born October 17, 1990) is an American politician who currently serves in the Maryland House of Delegates, representing District 41 in northwest, northern and southwest Baltimore City.

Early Life and Education: Attar was born fourth of six children to an Iranian-Jewish father and a Moroccan-Jewish mother. She was raised as a Sephardi Orthodox Jew in Baltimore, where she attended the Bais Yaakov School for Girls. Attar later graduated from the University of Baltimore, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in criminal justice in 2011, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where she earned her Juris Doctor degree in 2014.

Career: While attending the University of Baltimore, Attar worked as a paralegal for Greenspan, Hitzel & Schrader until 2015, when she became a trial attorney for the firm. In the same year, she also began working as an assistant state’s attorney in the Baltimore State’s Attorney office, prosecuting narcotics and firearms cases.

Political Career: On June 9, 2017, Attar announced that she would run for the Maryland House of Delegates in District 41. During the Democratic primary, she ran on a platform of spurring development, improving schools, and reforming the juvenile justice system. Attar won the Democratic primary in June 2018, defeating incumbents Angela Gibson and Bilal Ali.

Attar was sworn into the Maryland House of Delegates on January 9, 2019. She is the first Orthodox Jew elected to the Maryland General Assembly and the highest-ranking Orthodox Jewish woman in American history. Attar served on the Environment and Transportation Committee from 2019 to 2020, afterwards serving as a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Political Positions: In March 2019, Attar voted against a bill that would allow school resource officers to carry guns in Baltimore schools. She also supported a bill that would allow Johns Hopkins University to have its own private police force. During the 2020 legislative session, Attar introduced a bill that would require incarceration for violent offenders with open warrants.