About Pete

Pete Holmes, a Seattle resident since 1985, is a successful attorney with a penchant for public service. The middle child of five brothers, Pete grew up on a small family farm in central Virginia, attended public schools, and received his B.A. in American Studies from Yale College in 1978, with a concentration in Energy & Environmental Sciences. He worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., in Washington, D.C., before entering the University of Virginia School of Law, where he and his wife Ann each earned their J.D. in 1984.

Pete left Miller Nash LLP—where he had been partner-in-charge of the Seattle office’s Insolvency & Reorganization Group—late in 2001. By early 2002, the Seattle City Council appointed him to serve on the Seattle Police Department’s first Office of Professional Accountability Review Board. Pete served as the Board Chair from 2003 to 2008, working tirelessly and courageously to increase the transparency, efficiency and fairness of the City’s police accountability system. One especially controversial July 2007 report (out of eight issued during his Board tenure) led to the appointment of blue ribbon police accountability panels by both Mayor Nickels and the City Council, eventually culminating in a new police union contract with 29 recommended changes to Seattle’s system for investigating misconduct complaints against its police officers.

Pete's final term on the OPA Review Board concluded in fall 2008, when both of the couple’s children left the family nest—a small, century-old farmhouse in the Lakewood/Seward Park neighborhood—for college. Pete is back in active bankruptcy practice at the Crocker Kuno PLLC firm in downtown Seattle, while Ann cares for her aging parents.

"It's time for me to step up to the role of servant-leader,” Pete explains. “Seattle, like the rest of the Nation, is in a rebuilding, back-to-basics mode. We need the work of committed professionals—not professional politicians—to get Seattle back on track toward a livable, affordable, working city. This requires practical assessment, creative problem solving, transparent decision making and a true commitment to accountability."

Too often the interests of the people take a back seat in the City Attorney's office. The relationship between our beloved communities and the City Attorney is stuck in arcane and ineffective policies, even while eight young men and teens in my own neighborhood have succumbed to gang violence. It’s time for a City Attorney who insists that our elected officials’ priorities match our own.”