Brian L. Blalock is a staff attorney and director of the Youth Justice Project (YJP) at Bay Area Legal Aid. YJP provides legal representation and does systemic advocacy on issues related to youth who are under twenty-five years old. It aims to create a civil legal support network for youth throughout the Bay area through a strong presence in the community and collaboration with system partners with a focus on better supporting vulnerable and disconnected youth. Brian’s current projects at YJP include working with homeless young adults in reconnecting to appropriate systems and services and providing comprehensive civil legal services to youth in the dependency or delinquency system with focused initiatives working with trafficked and LGBT youth.

At YJP, Brian has also worked on a number of systemic issues, such as the statewide implementation of extended foster care, funding and services parity for delinquency-involved foster youth, and better supports for relative caregivers. He has worked on legislation, including most recently AB 2454, which allows youth to re-enter foster care after 18 if they are homeless, and the creation and implementation of the Approved Relative Caregiver Funding Option Program (ARC), a new funding entitlement for foster youth who are not federally eligible and are placed with relatives.

In 2012, Brian was named as one of the fifty California Lawyers on the Fast Track by The Recorder to celebrate young lawyers who have demonstrated significant leadership and achievement. In 2014, he received an Ebby award, given by the East Bay Children’s Law Office to honor individuals who have been instrumental in implementing new laws and policies affecting foster youth in California.

Brian started his legal career as a Skadden fellow at BayLegal, where he founded the Youth Justice Project. Before becoming a lawyer, Brian worked as a religious affairs consultant, a fight trainer, and a public school teacher in the south Bronx. He has graduate degrees from Columbia and Harvard and a law degree from Stanford Law School.