Justin Edward Fairfax (February 17, 1979 – April 16, 2026) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 41st lieutenant governor of Virginia from 2018 to 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the second African American to be elected to statewide office in Virginia, after Douglas Wilder. In 2019, he faced sexual assault allegations dating to 2000 and 2004, resulting in his departure from his law firm and calls for his resignation as lieutenant governor. He served out the remainder of his term.
Fairfax was a Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia in the 2021 election. He finished fourth in the Democratic primary with 3.54% of the vote. On the morning of April 16, 2026, Fairfax fatally shot his wife, Cerina Fairfax, before killing himself in a murder–suicide.
Justin Edward Fairfax was born on February 17, 1979, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He moved with his family from Pittsburgh to Northeast Washington, D.C., when he was five years old. One of four children, Fairfax graduated from DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, where he was senior class president.
Fairfax graduated from Duke University in 2000, with a degree in public policy. After serving on the staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for two years, Fairfax attended Columbia Law School, where he graduated with a Juris Doctor in 2005 and was a member of the Columbia Law Review.
Fairfax's ancestors were enslaved by the Lords Fairfax of Cameron, for whom Fairfax County, Virginia, is named. His ancestor, Simon Fairfax, was freed by Thomas Fairfax, 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who manumitted his slaves as part of his Swedenborgian beliefs. Justin Fairfax was presented with a copy of the manumission document by his father on the day he was sworn in as Virginia's lieutenant governor in 2018. Fairfax's eldest brother, Roger Jr., is a legal scholar and Dean of Howard University Law School.
Fairfax was a briefing coordinator for Tipper Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign of Al Gore, in the campaign's Nashville, Tennessee, office. He was also a staffer for Democratic senator John Edwards of North Carolina, in his Washington office.
Over the summer of 2004, he joined the John Kerry presidential campaign, as a body man for Edwards, then the vice presidential candidate.
He then served as law clerk to Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2005. He worked in the Washington office of the law firm WilmerHale before joining the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2010. Fairfax worked for two years as a federal prosecutor in Alexandria, Virginia. He served as deputy coordinator of the Northern Virginia Human Trafficking Task Force during this time.
Fairfax ran for public office for the first time in 2013, seeking the Democratic nomination for state attorney general. He lost to Mark Herring, but surprised party insiders with his strong performance in the primary. Herring defeated Fairfax by about 4,500 votes out of 141,600 cast in a closer-than-expected race. The Washington Post's editorial board praised both candidates during the primary, but endorsed Fairfax, writing that he had displayed "an agile and impressive command of the issues with a prosecutor's passion for justice."
After the race, Fairfax co-chaired the 2014 reelection campaign of U.S. Senator Mark Warner from Virginia. The following year, he was recruited to work at the law firm of Venable LLP, in the firm's Tysons, Virginia, office. Fairfax then worked for Morrison & Foerster, a law firm where he made partner in September 2018. In July 2019, following sexual assault allegations against him, Fairfax announced that he was resigning from Morrison & Foerster, which had accepted his resignation.
Fairfax was a visitor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy from 2008 to 2014 and again beginning in 2015. On February 8, 2019, the school's dean, Judith Kelley, asked Fairfax to step down while pending the resolution of the allegations.
Lieutenant Governor of Virginia
In 2017, Fairfax ran for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. In the Democratic primaries, he faced Gene Rossi, a federal prosecutor, who had trained Fairfax when they worked together in Alexandria's Eastern District federal court, and Susan Platt, a political lobbyist and consultant, who had served as chief of staff to Joe Biden in the 1990s. Platt had also run Virginia Senator Chuck Robb's 1994 re-election campaign and Don Beyer's unsuccessful 1997 gubernatorial campaign.
Citing their unease with Dominion Energy's planned construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, all three candidates in the Democratic primary pledged to refuse campaign contributions from Dominion Energy, despite the company being the largest contributor to Virginia political campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats. Although early polling showed Platt in the lead, Fairfax significantly outraised both of his opponents and proved victorious in the primary election, carrying about 49% of the vote.
Fairfax then faced Republican nominee Jill Vogel, a state senator from Fauquier County, in the general election. Fairfax and Vogel raised comparable amounts of money for their campaigns—$3.9 million and $3.7 million, respectively. A forum between Fairfax and Vogel was held at Piedmont Virginia Community College on August 9, 2017 and a debate between the two candidates was held at the University of Richmond on October 5.
Noting that Fairfax had been largely unknown when he ran for attorney general four years earlier, The Washington Post wrote that Fairfax had transitioned from "party crasher" to "party insider" in the time since, having "methodically done the work necessary to raise his profile and pay dues." The Washington Post went on to endorse Fairfax in the race, calling him "bright, competent, well-versed" and "the much better choice".
Fairfax's opposition to the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines led to him being omitted from a small number of campaign flyers that were distributed by the campaign for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam. These flyers were released at the request of Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA), which supports the pipeline – LIUNA had endorsed Northam (and Northam's running mate for attorney general, Mark Herring, who was included on the flyer), but not Fairfax. As Fairfax was black, while Northam and Herring are both white, some activists criticized the Northam campaign's decision to accommodate LIUNA's request.
Fairfax responded to the controversy by saying, "This should not have happened, and it should not happen again, and there needs to be robust investment in making sure that we are communicating with African American voters and we are engaging our base." The Fairfax campaign later remarked that the Democratic ticket was "working well together", adding "One piece of literature does not change that." All houses that received the LIUNA flyers also received standard campaign flyers including Fairfax.