At the start of President Trump’s first administration, Skye Perryman joined a small legal organization, without even a website, bent on holding power to account.

Now, she runs the group — Democracy Forward — which is 66 lawyers strong and among the most formidable legal foes to Trump’s second term agenda.

Since Trump returned to the White House, Democracy Forward has filed more than 100 legal actions against his administration, by its count, notching victories in more than a dozen cases spanning data protections from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the release of billions of dollars in frozen funds.

In an interview with The Hill, Perryman said fighting Trump’s agenda has changed since 2017, forcing a recalibration of the legal defense against it. But Perryman believes it's a fight worth working to win.

“I had the big task of taking what was a small startup organization with a promising proof of concept that very few people knew about and growing that into an institution that could really withstand and be a leader in the threats to our democracy,” said Perryman, Democracy Forward’s president and CEO.

“We've been building this organization to be able to address those challenges,” she added.

Perryman’s career started in Big Law, working for the firms Covington & Burling and WilmerHale for a decade before joining Democracy Forward’s founding litigation team in 2017, during Trump's first term.

She left Democracy Forward after a year for another job but returned to lead the group in 2021 after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Both Covington & Burling and WilmerHale are law firms that have found themselves in Trump's crosshairs during his second term when he went after firms that employed attorneys tied to investigations against him or to his Democratic political rivals. Perryman was already........

© The Hill