Summary
In October 2019, the Honorable Doctor Melissa Lin Jones joined the United States Department of Labor as a member of the Benefits Review Board and administrative appeals judge. From 2006 through 2009, Judge Jones was an administrative law judge with the District of Columbia Department of Employment Services, Office of Hearings and Adjudication, Administrative Hearings Division, and from 2010 through 2015, she adjudicated workers’ compensation appeals as an administrative appeals judge for the District of Columbia Department of Employment Services, Compensation Review Board. Judge Jones was an administrative law judge with the Social Security Administration from 2015 through 2019.
Judge Jones joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno in the Judicial Studies Graduate Degree Program in Fall 2026. She has been on the faculty of the National Judicial College since 2011 and was the Chair of the National Judicial College’s Faculty Council in 2025.
Selected publications
Judge Jones has written several articles including:
Featured article: The Journey, Not the Destination: The University of Nevada, Reno’s Judicial Studies Graduate Degree Program in volume 62, issue 2 of Court Review
- “115 Years Later, What Have We Learned: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory File” in the Fall 2025 volume of the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal
- “A View from Behind the Curtain: A Judge Reveals the Secrets Workers’ Compensation and Occupational Health Care Professionals Want to Know” in the Spring 2025 volume of the Labor Law Journal
- “The Myth, Specter, and Bias That Still Drive the Compensability of Work-Related Psychological Injury Claims” in volume 21 of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy
- “One-Shotters or Have-Not’s Should Come Out Ahead In The District of Columbia’s Private Sector Workers’ Compensation System But Do They?” and “Why Proving a Work-Related, Psychological Injury Claim Stresses You Out,” both published in volume 41 of the Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary
- “Injecting Fault into a No-Fault System: The Aggressor Defense in Work-Related Fight Cases” in volume 32 of the Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal.
- “Justice O’Connor’s Legacy Lives Through Us” in the March/April 2024 edition of The Washington Lawyer
- “10 Things You Might Have Forgotten During the Pandemic” in the November/December 2022 edition of The Washington Lawyer
- “Why Did You Do That? Confessions of a Master of Judicial Studies Graduate” on page 13 of the 2014/2015 edition of Case In Point;
- “Success in the Practice of Administrative Adjudication” in the July/August 2011 edition of The Washington Lawyer.
In addition to reviewing and improving several textbooks, she has been a contributor to Black’s Law Dictionary, Dictionary of Legal Usage, Modern American Usage, and Reading the Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (a book about statutory construction by co-authors Bryan A. Garner and Justice Antonin Scalia).
Education
- Ph.D., Judicial Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, 2021
- MJS, University of Nevada, Reno, 2014
- J.D., State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law
- B.A., English Literature, summa cum laude in the Honors Program, St. Bonaventure University